The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Friday that Ruslans Bondars, the operator of counter- antivirus service “Scan4you,” was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The sentencing follows Bondars’ May 16 conviction on one count of conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and one count of computer intrusion with intent to cause damage and aiding and abetting, according to the DoJ. The DoJ described Bondars as a Latvian “non-citizen,” which means he was a citizen of the former USSR who resided in Riga, Latvia. Bondars’ conviction was based on his operation of Scan4you, which was an online counter-antivirus software that computer hackers used to determine whether their malware could be detected by antivirus software. “At its height, Scan4you was one of the largest services of its kind and had at least thousands of users,” a DoJ release explained. “Malware developed with the assistance of Scan4you included some of the most prolific malware known to the FBI and was used in major computer intrusions committed against American businesses.”
