SEATTLE — Federal prosecutors told a judge on Wednesday that they don’t object to delaying until November the trial for a Russian man charged with hacking U.S. businesses.
Roman Seleznev’s trial had been set for May 4, but a judge appointed the federal public defender’s office to his case on Jan. 14 after he fired his previous lawyers for unknown reasons.
Seleznev’s new lawyer, Russell Leonard, quickly filed a motion saying he needs time to review the massive amount of material generated in this case and requested a six-month continuance.
Seleznev was arrested in the Maldives in July; his lawyers said the arrest was illegal. He was moved to Guam and then Seattle to face a 2011 indictment. Seleznev is charged with 40 counts that range from wire fraud to identity theft. Prosecutors he was a leader in the marketplace for stolen credit cards and earned millions of dollars in illicit profits from the enterprise.
The judge has yet to rule on a motion filed by prosecutors on Jan. 15 that claims Seleznev has plenty of money, likely hidden away, and should not qualify for public defense.
On Wednesday, prosecutors filed a response to the request for a new trial date, saying they’ll agree to Nov. 2. They said they’ve collected 10,000 pages of materials and forensic images that contain 4.75 terabytes of data for this case. A terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes and one gigabyte of storage space is 1,000 megabytes, which is equivalent to 500,000 double-spaced pages of text, the motion said. In addition, the defense team will also need to review 17 terabytes of evidence collected for another case against Seleznev in Nevada where he’s charged with racketeering.
Prosecutors agreed to give Seleznev’s lawyers time to review this data, but said they’ll object to any further delays.
It will be up to the judge to decide whether to move the trial out six months.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
