MOSCOW, December 22 (RAPSI) – Attorney Igor Litvak has filed a motion with a court in Seattle seeking to postpone until June 2017 sentencing of Russian national Roman Seleznev, who has been found guilty of committing cybercrimes which allegedly caused $170 million damage around the world.

RAPSI obtained a copy of the motion on Thursday.

“A number of factors supports the granting of a continuance in this case”, Litvak, who was retained by Seleznev about two weeks ago, said in his request.

Currently, Seleznev’s sentence is scheduled for February 10, 2017.

According to the lawyer, he expected to be adequately prepared by this date but it became clear that it would be impossible, in particular because of Christmas and New Year holidays.

He said that he would obtain the trial transcripts from a court reporter, “in the best-case scenario,” in the end of January 2017. He will not be able “to work on the sentencing memorandum in this case” until he reviews the transcripts.

Litvak explained that he is to study “enormous” scope of documents in the amount of “3 TB or 3,000 GB.”

The attorney also intends to submit letters supporting Seleznev to the court.  All the people who he is going to contact are residing in Russia and/or other former-Soviet republics.

“As the official holidays in Russia are extended until the middle of January, I will not be able to locate those individuals regarding their letters of support as it is common in Russia to travel during this holiday period,” Litvak noted.

Seleznev was found guilty in August by a federal jury on 38 of 40 counts, including wire fraud, possession of unauthorized access devices and intentional damage to a protected computer.

Seleznev was arrested in the Maldives in 2014 and taken to the U.S. territory of Guam. Later he was transferred to Seattle and put in jail.

Russia's foreign ministry said that Seleznev was "kidnapped" as he attempted to board a plane in the Maldives.

U.S. prosecutors claim that between October 2009 and October 2013 Seleznev hacked into retail point of sale systems and installed malicious software to steal credit card numbers from various businesses. He allegedly created and operated the infrastructure to facilitate the theft and sale of credit card data, used servers located all over the world to facilitate his operation, and sold stolen credit card data on the internet. In total, Seleznev stole and sold more than 2.9 million credit card numbers, according to prosecutors.

After having been brought to Seattle, Seleznev changed a number of defense lawyers. He retained attorneys from such law firms as Fox Rothschild LLP, Garvey Schubert Barer, Corr Cronin Michelson Baumgardner Fogg & Moore LLP, Calfo Eakes & Ostrovsky PLLC. Until recently, John Henry Browne represented Seleznev.