A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, sentenced Maksim Silnikau to 16 years in prison on August 5 for creating and running Ransom Cartel, the ransomware-as-a-service operation he stood up in 2021. Between 2021 and 2023, Ransom Cartel conspirators attacked at least 18 companies, including firms in California, New York and Nebraska, and others abroad, according to the Justice Department. Accounts of when Ransom Cartel began have never lined up: prosecutors date the operation to May 2021, while Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 did not observe it until mid-January 2022. Silnikau ran the operation under another name from May 2021, renamed it "Ransom Cartel" in late 2021, then tried to publicize it on security news sites. Unit 42 has never called Ransom Cartel a rebrand of REvil.