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58 Arrested In International Cybercrime Crackdown
Interpol's Operation Jackal IV arrested 58 people across 22 countries, disrupting Black Axe-linked money laundering and fraud networks and uncovering $166 million.
Law enforcement in 22 countries coordinated on Operation Jackal IV from November 2025 to June 2026, arresting 58 people and identifying hundreds of suspects, Interpol announced. Actions in Argentina uncovered a 196-person crime-as-a-service network providing domains and money laundering support to Black Axe, with 17 arrests there; South African raids in Johannesburg linked to romance and investment scams targeting the elderly led to 39 arrests and about $2.7 million seized. Romanian investigators found $166 million in stolen and laundered funds in electronic wallets controlled by a cryptocurrency investment scam call center, making 11 arrests and seizing about $379,000 plus properties and luxury watches. Interpol also flagged rising sextortion of minors as young as 14 via social media and gaming platforms.
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US takes down NightmareStresser DDoS-for-hire platform
FBI seized NightmareStresser, a DDoS-for-hire platform with 566,000 users and servers capable of 200 Gbps attacks, under Operation PowerOFF.
US law enforcement seized the nightmare-stresser[.]com and nightmarestresser[.]org domains used by the DDoS-for-hire service. Searchlight Cyber reported in 2023 that NightmareStresser had over 566,000 registered users and 52 dedicated servers launching attacks of up to 200 Gbps against Layer 4 and Layer 7 targets. The FBI said the service was used for hundreds of thousands of actual or attempted DDoS attacks since 2022. The action continues Operation PowerOFF, which began in December 2018 and previously took down DigitalStress, Dstat.cc and dozens of booter domains.
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Russian Man Extradited Over Malware Campaign Targeting Freelancers
A Russian national was extradited to the US for allegedly spreading TVRAT and DarkVNC malware to 80,000 freelance platform users via Excel attachments.
Searzhudin Tamirlanovich Aktulaev, 40, was arrested in Cyprus in May 2025, extradited on August 28, 2026, and indicted on conspiracy, computer damage, unauthorized access and aggravated identity theft charges. Prosecutors say he and co-conspirators used about 255 fake accounts on a freelance employment platform's messaging system to send macro-laden Excel attachments between June 2016 and November 2017, deploying TVRAT (TVSPY/TeamSpy) and DarkVNC remote access trojans. Thousands of victims were identified on a US-hosted C2 domain, with roughly half of the 80,000 affected users in the US; C2 infrastructure was paid for with virtual currency. If convicted he faces up to 20 years for wire fraud conspiracy plus additional terms and fines.
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