A Russian hacker has been arrested by Spanish Police at the request of American authorities for alleged involvement in hacking the US Presidential election.
Pyotr Levashov was arrested on 7 April in Barcelona on a US computer crimes warrant, according to a spokeswoman for Spain's National Court. The AFP news agency reported that Mr. Levashov was the subject of an extradition request by the US.
This incidence drew immediate attention as Levashov's wife Maria told Russian broadcaster RT that he was arrested for involvement in 2016 presidential election hacking.
According to Maria Levashova, "the armed police stormed into their apartment in Barcelona overnight, keeping her and her friend locked in a room for two hours while they quizzed Levashov."
The cybersecurity website KrebsOnSecurity wrote that Levashov was not arrested only for election hacking charges, but he was allegedly responsible for "running multiple criminal operations that paid virus writers and spammers to install 'fake antivirus' software" under the alias "Severa."
The site adds: "There is ample evidence that Severa is the cybercriminal behind the Waledac spam botnet, a spam engine that for several years infected between 70,000 and 90,000 computers and was capable of sending approximately 1.5 billion spam messages a day."
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