April 2016 was a great month for putting cybercriminals in prison. On April 12 Paunch, the creator of the infamous Blackhole exploit kit, was sentenced to seven years in a Russian prison. This was soon followed by Aleksandr Panin, the creator of SpyEye: he was sentenced by a United States federal court to nine and a half years in prison for his role in creating SpyEye. One of his partners, Hamza Bendelladj, was sentenced to fifteen years.

The most recent case involved Esthost, a company we know very well from our research. Vladimir Tsastsin became the latest member of the Esthost gang to be sentenced to jail; he will spend more than 7 years in prison. He was also ordered to forfeit more than $2.5 million in property.