A 34-year-old Armenian man has pleaded guilty to hacking U.S. companies and deploying the infamous Ryuk ransomware to encrypt their systems.
Karen Serobovich Vardanyan was extradited to the United States after being arrested in Kyiv in April 2025 for providing initial access to corporate networks.
According to court documents, Vardanyan helped deploy Ryuk ransomware on the networks of multiple U.S. organizations between November 2019 and April 2020 after illegally accessing their systems.
In one attack, Vardanyan and his co-conspirators breached a Michigan company that paid 200 BTC (worth more than $1.1 million at the time). Two other attacks the prosecutors noted include a technology company in Wilsonville, Oregon, and a school in Texas.
“Vardanyan and his co-conspirators illegally accessed computer networks of victim companies and deployed ransomware on hundreds of compromised servers and workstations,” the U.S. Department of Justice says.
