As reported previously by Infosecurity, Vrubelevsky was arrested in June of this year after the arrest of a suspect who confessed that he was hired by the co-founder of Chronopay yo launch a debilitating cyber-attack against one its competitors.
According to security researcher Brian Krebs of the Krebs on Security newswire, Vrublevsky is perhaps best known as the co-owner of the Rx-Promotion rogue online pharmacy program, whilst his company has also consistently "has been involved in credit card processing for - and in many cases setting up companies on behalf of - rogue anti-virus or `scareware' scams that use misleading PC security alerts in a bid to frighten people into purchasing worthless security software.”
In his latest report on the lengthy saga of Chronopay's co-founder, Krebs says that Vrublevsky’s legal team asked the court to release their client pending a trial next month, offering to pay bail of a million dollars, but the refused the request.
“Vrublevsky co-founded ChronoPay in 2003 along with Igor Gusev, another Russian businessman who is facing criminal charges in Russia stemming from his alleged leadership role at GlavMed and SpamIt, sister programs that until recently were the world’s largest rogue online pharmacy affiliate networks. Huge volumes of internal documents leaked from ChronoPay last year indicate Vrublevsky co-ran a competing rogue internet pharmacy - Rx-Promotion - although Vrublevsky publicly denies this”, says the researcher in his latest newswire.
Citing the Interfax newswire, Krebs says that Vrublevsky faces punishment under two articles of the Russian criminal code – illegal access to computer information, and the creation, use and dissemination of harmful computer programs. Both involve imprisonment for three to seven years.