MOSCOW, February 3 (RAPSI) - Russian national Petr Murmylyuk was sentenced in the US on Friday to two and a half years in prison for conspiracy to commit securities fraud, according to court documents obtained by RAPSI.

In addition to 30 months behind bars, Murmylyuk will face three years of supervised release. Conditions of his supervised release will include cooperation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and a prohibition from incurring any new credit. He will be further required to pay upwards of $505k in restitution.

Murmylyuk, a 33-year-old New York resident, pleaded guilty in July 2013 to having conspired to commit securities fraud.

Murmylyuk admitted to his role in a scheme aimed at facilitating theft from online trading accounts at various brokerage firms. These brokerage firms suffered combined losses of about $1 million, according to a statement released Friday by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

“Members of the conspiracy first gained unauthorized access to the online accounts of brokerage firm customers. The conspirators then used stolen identities to open additional accounts—referred to in the information as ‘profit accounts’—at other brokerage houses. They then caused the victims’ accounts to make unprofitable and illogical securities trades with the profit accounts, leading to losses in the victims’ accounts and gains in the profit accounts,” according to the FBI statement.

The conspiracy members recruited foreign nationals in the US to open bank accounts in order to deposit illegal proceeds.