Career
At the time, the mass media claimed he was a mathematician and had a degree in biochemistry from Saint St. Petersburg State Institute of Technology. Three of his accomplices were arrested attempting to withdraw funds in Tel Aviv, Rotterdam and San Francisco. Interrogation of his accomplices directed investigations to Levin, then working as a computer programmer for Saint St. Petersburg based computer company Association for the Study of Internal Fixation Saturn.
However, Russia"s Constitution prohibits extradition of its citizens to foreign countries.
In March 1995 Levin was apprehended at London"s Stansted Airport by Scotland Yard officers when making an interconnecting flight from Moscow. Levin"s lawyers fought against extradition to the United States, but their appeal was rejected by the House of Lords in June 1997.
Levin was delivered into United States. custody in September 1997, and tried in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New New York In his plea agreement he admitted to only one count of conspiracy to defraud and to stealing United States$3.7 million.
In February 1998 he was convicted and sentenced to three years in jail, and ordered to make restitution of United States$240,015.
Citibank claimed that all but United States$400,000 of the stolen United States$10.7 million had been recovered. After the compromise of their system, Citibank updated their systems to use Dynamic Encryption Card, a physical authentication token. However, it was not revealed how Levin had gained access to the relevant account access details.
According to him, Levin was not actually a scientist (mathematician, biologist or the like) but a kind of ordinary system administrator who managed to get hands on the ready data about how to penetrate in Citibank machines and then exploit them.
ArkanoiD emphasized all the communications were carried over X.25 network and the Internet was not involved. ArkanoiD"s group in 1994 found out Citibank systems were unprotected and it spent several weeks examining the structure of the bank"s United States of America-based networks remotely.
Penetrators did not plan to conduct a robbery for their personal safety and stopped their activities at some time. One of them later handed over the crucial access data to Levin (reportedly for the stated $100).
