Armenian national gets 24 months for role in Ryuk ransomware attacks

Karen Serobovich Vardanyan, 35, was sentenced to 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release for breaching U.S. corporate networks and deploying Ryuk ransomware between March 2019 and June 2020. He pleaded guilty in July after being extradited from Kyiv following an April 2025 arrest, with prosecutors saying he and co-conspirators collected roughly 1,610 bitcoins in ransom payments, worth over $15 million at the time, from victims including a Michigan company, a Texas school and an Oregon technology firm.