MOSCOW, February 8 (RAPSI) – Russian authorities arrested nine suspects in relation to a criminal case against large group of hackers from seventeen regions of the country who had allegedly stolen over one billion rubles ($17 million), RAPSI learnt from official representative of the Investigative Committee Irina Volk on Wednesday.

According to Volk, in May 2016, the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB) stopped activities of a hacker group responsible for embezzlement of funds from accounts of bank clients. She added that the group has been conducting cyberattacks since 2013 and its fifty members managed to obtain over a billion rubles.

Allegedly, hackers were not only attacking banking systems but also managed to bypass security of critically important objects of Russian infrastructure and strategic industrial objects.

At the moment, twenty-seven organizers and members of the groups became defendants in the criminal case with nineteen of them being detained, Volk said. On January 25, nine suspects in the case were arrested.