CarderPlanet Founder Vladislav Horohorin is Extradited to the United States

Washington DC - US Justice Department announced that world-famous hacker, Vlad Horohorin, was arraigned yesterday in the United States. Vladislav Anatolievich Horohorin, 30, allegedly "BadB" of Moscow, Russia, was previously indicted in 2009 by a federal grand jury in D.C. (District of Columbia case #1:2009-cr-00305) on charges of aggravated identity theft and access device fraud. Horohorin in conjunction with his attorney Arkady Bukh, has been fighting US extradition for nearly two years while being held in a French prison. The case itself concerns over one million allegedly stolen identities, this being the justification for US justice officials to travel across the ocean in pursuit of Horohorin.

His New York criminal attorney, Arkady Bukh, was quite outspoken. "What we have here Bukh says is a reckless disregard for jurisdiction on the part of US". "My client was in France-not the United States-when he was taken into custody for crimes he was alleged to have been committed on Russian soil. So not only was he not arrested for crimes committed in the United States, but he wasn't even arrested in France for crimes committed there.

"The US government seems to be under the impression that they are a global police force," Bukh says. "The problem with this is that individuals have always felt secure in the assumption that if they do not break the law of their nation or another nation they are 'safe'. Now, we've set the precedence that regardless of a country's laws and whether an individual has broken them that we have the authority as world cops to take people into custody. This is dangerous behavior."

Horohorin is a dual citizen of Russia and Israel. It is possible that Israel as well as Russia, could perceive this as an issue of territorial and jurisdictional dispute-especially when the alleged crimes occurred in Moscow, not the United States. The US government may find that this arrest places them once more in an unfavorable light, especially as Israel has long been an ally of the US government.


The United States Justice Department has had a rather problematic history with this behavior and has been called into question on the world stage for this type of forcible extradition in the past. In 2010 US Drug Enforcement Agents took into custody Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot accused of drug smuggling while in Monrovia, Liberia. Russia's Foreign Ministry took offense to this behavior, saying on their website that: "We're talking about a kidnapping of a Russian national from a third country. The actions of U.S. special services in the forcible and secret relocation of our national from Monrovia to New York could only [be] seen as open lawlessness."

"I'm sure we will see more and more jurisdictional infringement in the future," Arkady tells us. There are many issues of national sovereignty to consider and the US government cannot just decide that US jurisdiction is where they mandate it to be. International laws and conventions must be taken into consideration. My client is not a US citizen and he was not in the US when the crimes where allegedly committed.

It looks like that through Horohorin United States is trying to resolve its political issues with Russia and Israel. This is a problem."

This case may very well set a precedent for US legal authority in the future. Horohorin has been arraigned and hearings will begin shortly. Where this leads is anyone's guess at this point.

Arkady Bukh is a Federal criminal lawyer. His law firm, Bukh Law Firm P.C. (14 Wall Street, New York NY 10005) is one of the top ranked criminal firms in New York by leading consumer reviews sites. He can be reached at (212) 729-1632.