For years, members of the Russian cybercrime cartel Trickbot unleashed a relentless hacking spree on the world. “Fuck clinics in the usa this week,” one member wrote in internal Trickbot messages in 2020 about a list of 428 hospitals to target. Orchestrated by an enigmatic leader using the online moniker “Stern,” the group of around 100 cybercriminals stole hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of roughly six years. Kovalev is suspected of being the “founder” of Trickbot and allegedly used the Stern moniker, the BKA said in an online announcement. But unlike in other Trickbot- and Conti-related attributions, other countries have not publicly concurred with BKA’s Stern identification thus far.