After years of reading about “Tank” and months of planning a visit to him in a Colorado prison, I hear the door click open before I see him walk into the room. He pokes his head around a pillar with a giant grin and winks.
Tank, whose real name is Vyacheslav Penchukov, climbed to the top of the cyber-underworld not so much with technical wizardry as with criminal charm. “I am a friendly guy, I make friends easily,” the 39-year-old Ukrainian says.
Having friends in high places helped Penchukov evade police for so long. He spent nearly a decade on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and led two separate gangs across distinct periods of cyber-crime history. It is rare to speak to someone who has left so many victims behind; Penchukov spoke to us for six hours across two days for the podcast series Cyber Hack: Evil Corp. His first-ever interview reveals how prolific gangs operated, the mindset behind them, and new details about hackers still at large — including the alleged leader of the sanctioned Russian group Evil Corp.
It took more than 15 years for authorities to arrest Penchukov in a dramatic 2022 operation in Switzerland. “There were snipers on the roof and the police put me on the ground and handcuffed me and put a bag on my head on the street in front of my kids. They were scared,” he recalls, annoyed by what he sees as overkill. His thousands of victims would disagree: Penchukov and the gangs he led or joined stole tens of millions of pounds.
In the late 2000s he was part of the Jabber Zeus crew, named for their use of Zeus banking malware and Jabber chat. They stole directly from bank accounts of small businesses, local authorities and charities; in the UK alone more than 600 victims lost over £4m in three months. In those days cyber-crime was “easy money,” he says — banks and police were ill-prepared. Penchukov ran an office in Donetsk with a small group including Maksim Yakubets, later sanctioned by the US and accused of leading Evil Corp. By day they would steal; by night Penchukov DJed as Slava Rich.
He tells how police eavesdropping on Jabber chats identified him after he revealed details about his daughter’s birth. An FBI-led operation, Trident Breach, saw arrests in Ukraine and the UK, but Penchukov escaped after a tip-off and by outrunning police in an Audi S8. He tried to go straight, starting a coal trading company, but being outed on the FBI Most Wanted list and constant shakedowns by officials made life difficult. Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea wrecked his business — missiles struck his apartment — and he returned to cyber-crime to pay off extortionate demands. “I just decided it was the fastest way to make money to pay them,” he says.
His career mirrors the evolution of cyber-crime: from direct bank theft to ransomware. Between 2018 and 2022 he became a top affiliate of several ransomware services — Maze, Egregor, Conti — and led IcedID affiliates who infected over 150,000 computers with malware to harvest access for other attacks, including ransomware. Ransomware was harder but more profitable: “We were able to make about $200,000 a month. Much higher profits.”
He recounts an industry-wide “herd mentality” after rumours of a $20m ransom paid to a hospital. Hundreds of hackers then targeted US medical institutions to try to replicate the payout, blind to patient harm. Penchukov says some gang members referred to “their handlers” in Russian security services like the FSB. When asked whether criminal groups worked with Russian agencies he shrugs: “Of course.”
Prosecutors accuse Penchukov of involvement in multiple damaging attacks. One of the most serious was the 2020 ransomware attack on the University of Vermont Medical Center, which disabled 5,000 computers, caused more than $30m in losses, and left critical services disrupted for weeks. Penchukov denies directly carrying out that attack, saying he admitted involvement to reduce his sentence. He is serving two concurrent nine-year sentences and has been ordered to pay $54m in restitution.
In Englewood Correctional Facility, the mood is surprisingly upbeat. Penchukov is learning languages, playing sport and studying; a Russian-English dictionary sits by his side. He jokes about not being “smart enough” because he is in prison. The low-security Colorado facility feels a long way from Donetsk.
Despite remorse being scarce, he expresses regret about trusting fellow hackers. “You can’t make friends in cyber-crime, because the next day, your friends will be arrested and they will become an informant,” he says. “Paranoia is a constant friend of hackers.” Success breeds complacency: “If you do cyber-crime long enough you lose your edge.”
Victims’ stories show the human cost. Lieber’s Luggage, a family business in Albuquerque, lost $12,000 in a single swipe. Owner Leslee remembers “disbelief and horror” and how the theft devastated day-to-day operations and family morale. For them, seeing Penchukov’s life of luxury — six expensive German cars, nights out — adds insult to injury. “There’s nothing that we could say that would affect him,” Leslee says.
Penchukov appears most remorseful about attacks on vulnerable targets; he mentions a ransomware incident affecting a disabled children’s charity with some regret. Mostly he remains matter-of-fact about victims, suggesting many losses were covered by insurance or were acceptable collateral for criminals chasing big paydays.
His relationships with former associates have been complicated. He says he deliberately avoided contact with Maksim Yakubets — “Aqua” — after Yakubets was sanctioned in 2019. The wider hacker community shunned Yakubets and alleged Evil Corp affiliates, yet the group persisted. The UK’s National Crime Agency later sanctioned 16 members tied to the decade-long spree. Yakubets remains at large with a $5m US bounty, making his arrest unlikely while he stays in Russia.
Penchukov’s story underlines how cyber-crime flourished when banks and law enforcement lagged and how it has professionalised into ransomware empires. He credits friendships and networking for his rise and blames trust for his fall. He argues the sentences are too harsh and is hopeful of early release; prosecutors and victims see accountability and restitution as overdue.
As our interview ends, he smiles and says he made mistakes. But he seems more concerned about being outwitted by peers and informants than by the people his gangs hurt. The scale of damage — drained accounts, crippled hospitals and devastated small businesses — remains a sharp reminder of the collateral human cost when criminal entrepreneurship meets weak defences and high reward.
