Arkady L. Bukh

Arkady L. Bukh (Russian: Аркадий Львович Бух; born July 25, 1972) is an American criminal defense attorney. He is best known for representing Azamat Tazhayakov, a college student charged with conspiring to obstruct justice and obstructing justice with the intent to impede a terrorism investigation in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.^[1][2] Tazhayakov was later convicted of both conspiracy and obstruction and justice and sentenced to three and a half years in federal prison in June 2015.

Early life and education

Bukh was born on July 25, 1972 in Baku, now the capital of independent Azerbaijan. He arrived in the United States in the early 1990s at the time of collapse of USSR. Bukh graduated from New York Law School and has been licensed to practice in the State of New York since 2003. He speaks fluent Russian, Hebrew^[3] and English.

Career

Bukh is the founding partner in the Law Offices of Bukh & Associates in New York City. As a criminal defense attorney, Bukh represents individuals and closely held businesses. Bukh also practices international litigation, white collar criminal defense, international estate planning, second citizenship and residence planning.

Boston Marathon bombing

Bukh represented Azamat Tazhayakov, one of the alleged co-conspirators in the Boston Marathon bombing.^[4] He was convicted in April 2014. The 19-year-old from Kazakhstan attended the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the accused bomber.^[5] Tazhayakov was arrested and indicted for charges associated with evidence tampering.^[6][7]

Cyber crime

Bukh has also represented international hackers, like Igor Klopov, Oleg Nikolaenko, Dmitry Naskovets, Vlad Horohorin, Vladimir Tsastsin, Aleksandr Panin, Maxym Shinkarenko, and others.^[8]

Vladimir Tsastsin

Vladimir Tsastsin led an Estonian group that was able to place banners on the websites of unsuspecting webmasters, which resulted in payment for any clicks going not to the site owner but to the fraudsters. Additionally, Tsastsin was able to manipulate queries and ads and resell them. Despite being acquitted of all charges in Estonian court in December, 2013,^[9] Tsastsin was extradited to the U.S. in October, 2014. He faces multiple counts of fraud and money laundering in the Southern District of New York.^[10]

Aleksandr Panin

Russian citizen Aleksandr Panin created the SpyEye Trojan that was used to attack online bank accounts. Panin was arrested in 2013 while on vacation in the Dominican Republic. Trapped in an FBI sting, Panin was extradited to the U.S, on charges of distributing SpyEye between 2009 and 2011.^[11]

Panin, who seemed to have been on Interpol’s notorious “[Interpol notice#Notice types|red list],” was wanted for embezzlement through cyber-fraud totaling $5 million.

The U.S. authorities did not inform the Russian Foreign Ministry about Panin’s extradition from the Dominican Republic. Russia did not give its consent to Panin’s extradition and protested the American actions;^[12] Russian authorities called the actions by the U.S. authorities completely “unacceptable.”^[13]

Igor Klopov

Igor Klopov targeted Forbes 400 individuals, including a close friend of former President George W. Bush. Klopov was charged by New York State in 2007 and sentenced to 3.5 to 10.5 years in prison.^[14]

Using the Forbes 400 list, Klopov was accused of stealing more than $1.5 million. Running the operation from his Moscow home, Klopov mined the internet for information about potential victims including Texas billionaire Charles J. Wyly, Jr, a friend of then-President George W. Bush.^[15]

Four of Klopov’s accomplices were subsequently arrested and pleaded guilty. Klopov’s group targeted Texas and California where property and deed information can be found online. Able to get information about property values and mortgage sizes, the group was able to focus on targets with generally large lines of credit.^[16]

Oleg Nikolaenko

Oleg Nikolaenko, dubbed “King of Spam” by the FBI. Nikolaenko was responsible for one-third of the world’s spam before being arrested in 2009.

The FBI’s break came in its investigation in August 2009, when Jody Smith of Missouri pleaded guilty to selling counterfeit Rolex watches. Using grand jury subpoenas, U.S. federal agents traced $459,000 in payments to Nikolaenko.

When Nikolaenko made a second trip to Las Vegas to attend the 2010 SEMA show, he was picked up by federal agents at the Bellagio Hotel and found to be carrying two passports and $4,000 in cash.^[17] Prosecutors say that world-wide spam dropped by 17 percent during the period Nikolaenko was detained.^[18]

Nikolaenko was sentenced to time served in 2013.^[19]

Vlad Horohorin

Vlad Horohorin was described by the US Secret Service as one of its five most wanted cyber criminals globally. Horohorin was one of the founders of CarderPlanet and ShadowCrew, online boards connecting cyber criminals around the world where they facilitated the trade. He was notorious for selling “dumps”, information encoded on the magnetic stripe of a credit card. Promoting his operations with video cartoons ridiculing American card holders.^[20][21] Horohorin was arrested in France in 2010 and extradited to the U.S. in 2012.^[22] He was sentenced to 88 months in prison and $125,739 in restitution.^[23][24]

Mikhail Rytikov

In 2013, a federal indictment in the District of New Jersey charged Mikhail Rytikov and four others with conspiring in a worldwide hacking scheme that targeted major corporate networks and stealing over 160 million credit card numbers.^[25] It is estimated that hundreds of millions of dollars was stolen, making it the largest such scheme ever prosecuted in the U.S.^[26]

The five men supposedly sought corporate victims who were engaged in financial transactions, retailers that received and sent financial data and other businesses that utilized information the men felt they could exploit. The targets of the attacks included NASDAQ, 7-Eleven, Carrefour, Hannaford, Dexia, JetBlue, Dow Jones & Company and others.^[26]

Rytikov, 27, of Odessa, Ukraine is still at large.^[26]

Maksim Shynkarenko

Shynkarenko, of Kharkiv, Ukraine is the most significant distributor of child pornography ever prosecuted in America according to American law enforcement authorities. Shynkarenko was indicted in 2008 by the Grand Jury for the New Jersey District and charged in 2012 with operating a network of websites.^[27] Pleading guilty to operating a child-exploitation enterprise in connection with the website which he ran from 2005 until 2008, Shynkarenko’s website led to convictions in 47 states. Over 600 U.S.-based customers, including 30 men from New Jersey have been convicted in connection with the investigation into Shynkarenko’s website.^[27]

Shynkarenko was arrested in 2009 while on vacation in Thailand and held for extradition to America. Shynkarenko fought extradition for three years and finally appeared in federal court.^[27]

In January, 2014, he pleaded guilty to all charges. He was sentenced to 30 years.^[27]

Michail Sorodsky

Sorodsky, 63, was sentenced to six years after he admitted to raping a sedated patient and sexually molesting seven others. Sorodsky portrayed himself as a “holistic healer” who would treat female patients who had been diagnosed with cancer. Using a probiotic yogurt, he would fondle the women and claim it was “treatment.”^[28]

Pretending to be a doctor in the Sheepshead community, Sorodsky would charge women up to $1,000 a visit. When Rimma Klots’ mother went for a “treatment” from Sorodsky, her daughter Rimma thought the method of treatment was a little different and decided to set up a sting-operation.^[29]

Posing as a patient, she visited Sorodsky. The younger Klots went to the licensing board when the treatment she received from Sorodsky consisted of getting a pelvic and breast exam.^[30]

When Sorodsky is released he will have to register as a sex offender, be subject to 10 years of supervised parole and wear personal monitoring equipment.^[31]

Other notable cases

Lak Vokra

Lak Vokra, a Manhattan real estate mogul was accused of raping a woman that he had met on a “sugar daddy” website.^[32] Vokra, stocky and bearded, had often posted images on his website and Facebook page showing him partying and socializing. The criminal case against Vokra was dropped in August, 2013.^[33]

A former Manhattan real estate mogul, Vohra, was accused of attacking his date inside his posh Wall Street apartment. The two had met through the dating site before agreeing to meet at Vohra’s home at 37 Wall Street.^[33]

Alexander Yakovlev

Alexander Yakovlev, former director of the United Nation’s oil-for-food program in Iraqm was accused of taking kickbacks totaling almost $1 million from UN contractors.^[34] Yakovlev was sentenced to time served in 2010.^[35][36]

Victor Koltun

Victor Koltun, a Brooklyn rabbi, was charged with a double murder-for-hire plot that left two Newburgh men dead. Koltun paid to have former police officer Francis Piscopo and his nephew Gerald killed to avoid paying a debt. Following 3 and a half years of delays, the jury convicted Koltun for the murders he orchestrated in an effort to avoid paying a debt. Koltun was eventually sentenced to two consecutive sentences of life in prison with no chance for parole.^[37]

The shooter in the murders, Frank Lewis pleaded guilty in 2011 and is serving 12.5 to 25 years in prison.^[38] The lookout in the crime, Craig Fennell, is serving 5 to 10.

Other

Other representations include cases related to federal jurisdiction regarding foreign defendants, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and RICO.

Personal life

Bukh’s father Lev Bukh (born 1947), a Professor of Psychology and Philosophy, is now retired. He lives in Brooklyn. Bukh’s mother is a child of a Holocaust survivor. She is a Physics professor who lives in Haifa, Israel. Bukh’s paternal great grandparent Boris Vannikov was a high-profile Soviet government official. Bukh’s maternal great grandparent Dr. Loshe was from Lyon, France, belonging to a family of founders of Salon.

Bukh is married and has two children.

References

External links

• Law Offices of Bukh & Associates
• Bukh Global Partners