Judge Orders US Lawyer In Russian Botnet Case To Pay Google (krebsonsecurity.com) 15
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: In December 2021, Google filed a civil lawsuit against two Russian men thought to be responsible for operating Glupteba, one of the Internet's largest and oldest botnets. The defendants, who initially pursued a strategy of counter suing Google for tortious interference in their sprawling cybercrime business, later brazenly offered to dismantle the botnet in exchange for payment from Google. The judge in the case was not amused, found for the plaintiff, and ordered the defendants and their U.S. attorney to pay Google's legal fees. The lawyer for the defendants, New York-based cybercrime defense attorney Igor Litvak, filed a motion to reconsider (PDF), asking the court to vacate the sanctions against him. He said his goal is to get the case back into court. "The judge was completely wrong to issue sanctions," Litvak told KrebsOnSecurity. "From the beginning of the case, she acted as if she needed to protect Google from something. If the court does not decide to vacate the sanctions, we will have to go to the Second Circuit (Court of Appeals) and get justice there."
Meanwhile, Google said the court's decision will have significant ramifications for online crime, adding that it's observed a 78 percent reduction in the number of hosts infected by Glupteba since its technical and legal attacks on the botnet last year.
"While Glupteba operators have resumed activity on some non-Google platforms and IoT devices, shining a legal spotlight on the group makes it less appealing for other criminal operations to work with them," reads a blog post from Google's General Counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado and vice president of engineering Royal Hansen. "And the steps [Google] took last year to disrupt their operations have already had significant impact."
Meanwhile, Google said the court's decision will have significant ramifications for online crime, adding that it's observed a 78 percent reduction in the number of hosts infected by Glupteba since its technical and legal attacks on the botnet last year.
"While Glupteba operators have resumed activity on some non-Google platforms and IoT devices, shining a legal spotlight on the group makes it less appealing for other criminal operations to work with them," reads a blog post from Google's General Counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado and vice president of engineering Royal Hansen. "And the steps [Google] took last year to disrupt their operations have already had significant impact."
Re: (Score:1)
To be fair, he's not asking the court to reverse its decision with re. to his scumbag clients. He's asking the court to reverse its decision with regard to sanctions against himself for what the court deemed to be intentionally misleading statements (he claims to merely be incompetent or have suffered a lapse in judgment rather than being malicious).
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To be fair, he's not asking the court to reverse its decision with re. to his scumbag clients. He's asking the court to reverse its decision with regard to sanctions against himself for what the court deemed to be intentionally misleading statements (he claims to merely be incompetent or have suffered a lapse in judgment rather than being malicious).
Is that a valid legal argument? I don't think incompetence ever has been successfully used as a get-out-of-jail free card. "He was too incompetent to realize stealing was wrong." Nope. Doesn't work. "He was too incompetent to realize that when she said 'no' she really meant 'no.'" Nope. Still doesn't work.
The dumbass should claim affluenza. Seems to be the one thing judges respect now.
Re:How the fuck is that man a lawyer? (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, incompetent council is often used as a reason for a retrial in death-penalty cases. And it's often true; wealthy folk with good lawyers rarely get death, while poor folk (often but not always minorities) cannot afford lawyers so get public defenders who are usually overworked and under-experienced.
In this case, the lawyer's first mistake was taking money from defendants who were not in the US. The second mistake was lying to the judge; never do that. I don't know if I think the lawyers deserves these sanctions, but they certainly walked down this road with their eyes open.
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Why did they even bother engaging with the lawsuit if they are not in the US? I don't think Russia would enforce any ruling from a US court against them.
Maybe they had assets in the US that they were worried might be taken if Google got a default judgement.
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Many lawyers have the mind-set of criminals and basically pursued a career in law to exactly know what they can legally get away with. The argument may actually work, despicable and repulsive as it is.
Re:How the fuck is that man a lawyer? (Score:4, Informative)
He expects the court to reverse their decision against his clients obvious protection racketing attempts? Is he fucking insane?
He expects the court to reverse their decision against himself. He's being sanctioned for representing clients, which is becoming common in the U.S. lately.
No, he is trying to game the system. Hard as it may be to believe, lawyers do have some ethical guidelines they need to conform to. Judges are actually pretty serious when they think they are being played. He should learn from the sanctions, I can see disbarment in this guys future career path.
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He's being sanctioned for representing clients, which is becoming common in the U.S. lately.
Actually, he's being sanctioned for lying to the court and knowingly participating in his clients' extortion attempt against Google. He basically behaved like an attorney for the Soprano family. I hope that attorneys doing these things isn't becoming so common in the U.S. lately.
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ROFLMAO, this is like a drug cartel suing police for tortious interference because it ruined the business deals it had with its street dealers. Let this guy complain all the way to the SCOTUS, see how far it gets him.
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