WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th January, 2023) US Federal prosecutors in Vladislav Klyushin's case withdrew their request asking a judge to allow them to use geolocation data as evidence in the Russian national's trial over his alleged role in a global hacking and trading scheme, his attorney Maksim Nemtsev told Sputnik.
"The government has withdrawn their request to introduce geolocation analyses related to IP address locations," Nemtsev said on Thursday night.
Klyushin's counsel argues that the GPS locations statistics should not be used as evidence because the data is unreliable and could easily be manipulated, according to court documents.
US Judge Patti Saris scheduled another pretrial hearing for January 18 to further review what evidence will be permitted in the trial.
The jury trial is scheduled to begin on January 30 at 8:30 a.m. (12:30 GMT).
Klyushin's defense previously filed a motion to dismiss Count IV or conspiracy to obtain unauthorized access to computers and to commit wire fraud and securities fraud and to partially dismiss Count I or securities fraud, which Judge Saris rejected.
Klyushin and four other Russian nationals were charged with crimes in connection with an alleged global hacking and trading scheme that netted the defendant $82 million through the use of stolen company data to inform trading decisions.
The US Justice Department accused the defendants of hacking the computer networks of two US filing agents used by publicly traded companies to make quarterly and annual filings during the period between January 2018 and September 2020.
Klyushin denied all accusations during the initial court hearing in January but the judge then rejected his request for bail and ordered that he be kept detained until the trial commences.
Klyushin owns the media monitoring and cybersecurity services company M13. He was arrested in Switzerland in March of 2021 and extradited to the United States later that year.
