This is a straight up lie, you could just rent hosting from this company as a "regular person".

The article literally has photos of their english-language customer-facing communications.

Any source to back up your claims? Otherwise it seemed pretty much a conspiracy theory to me.

I watched the downfall and eventual jailing of someone who had a great job, career, and family after he started getting involved in cybercrime.

As far as I can make sense of it, he enjoyed the thrill of feeling superior to others: Evading the law, exploiting people who viewed as stupid, and enriching himself in the process.

He got caught through a mistake that was really dumb in retrospect. I think he believed his intellectual superiority combined with the stupidity of others so much that eventually he couldn’t imagine anyone catching him.

Because they cannot be profitable. Job market is not the same on both ends. If you are east European and you try to get a job in an international corporation, the in all cases offer salaries adjusted for regional averages, unless you are willing to reallocate. Only few startups and FAANG like companies, often compensation in line what is received in the western world.

And there is also a thrill of doing it, which other guys already mentioned.

In a previous life I've employed contractors and software engineers to run a criminal website. Motivations for my guys were that it was well paid work that was technically challenging in order to evade enforcement agencies, and was 'fun' in that respect; they were "sticking it to than man (my service was regarded as moral by all my users & others); and there wasn't so much work about that they could pick and choose; lastly, I was a good employer because I had to be!!

If we use one of the comments from here that it was done at the behest of some government then its more like the offensive team of a legitimate government. Pretty much every thing can be colored grey that way and one just needs to find people that they can persuade or convince for their cause.

Imagine working for an organization where 1) cybersecurity is actually the #1 priority, ahead of "shareholder value" and all the other gobblygook, 2) you get to design systems where you actually have to assume that every other entity is malicious (not the usual carve-outs like "oh yeah we do zero trust.. but our entire management plane is Azure-managed it's unavoidable"), 3) your budget is effectively unlimited, and 4) you get paid several factors more than you would in private industry.

It's not easy to go legit, especially in today's job market, depending on where you live in the world also.

The US is unique with its high salaries for tech work (on the lower end of those of high salaries is pure ops work like this though). If you're in a country where the average sysadmin salary is substantially lower (to pick on Eastern Europe for a minute, you're looking at the equivalent of ~$30-35k USD/year), it's not hard to see why its tempting to go the cybercrime route.

> The people involved definitely have the skills to be profitable at legitimate work; it just puzzles me that they choose to support criminals.

I don't think it's that easy to go legit. having a tech job nowadays is already a luxury

Some people are just born into it. Mafia families, etc. There were some very smart people in the American mob, running scams that were immensely profitable. Eventually they get caught though, and with the ease and pervasivness of electronic surveillance today, it's pretty much impossible to do it anymre at least if you're anywhere where the authorities care about it (edit to add: and aren't in on it).

Cybersecurity is always last on the budget list. It is not easy to make money working in cybersecurity.

The only upside here is that criminals will (through legislation) eventually force companies to invest more.

You fail to take into account the ideological angle.

Some people are ready to die for their beliefs. Others just to run businesses supporting their causes.

3 of the 4 persons named have russian links (a large number of Moldovan citizens are ethnic russians).

The FSB? What are you going to do about that. Russia shot down an airliner full of Netherlands citizens and there were no repercussions.

Law enforcement doesn't typically talk about ongoing investigations.