Yevgeniy Nikulin sits in jail, just 34.9 miles from the corporate headquarters of LinkedIn.
He's accused of hacking LinkedIn and Dropbox and grabbing more than 100 million user credentials.
Russian embassy officials keep calling
But it is the number of phone calls about him from Russian officials that has his lead defense attorney, Arkady Bukh, wondering about his client's safety and his significance to Russia.
“They are very active, by far more active than any other case," Bukh said of Russian embassy officials. “Now it’s less frequent, but earlier in the case they were calling almost every day. I have no duties to them. They’re not my client,” Bukh told Bloomberg.
Russian embassy officials have met privately with hacking suspect
And Cyberscoop reports on a meeting between the suspect and Russian officials.
"While Nikulin refuses to have conversations more substantial than the weather or favorite color with his lawyers, he met privately last month with Russian government representatives without his lawyers present...."
And the law firm, the one that is defending him, actually had to escort Russian embassy officials out of its building after repeatedly telling them the suspect's lead attorney was unavailable.
So why is there so much interest in Yevgeniy Nikulin?
As CNBC noted, the Russians battled to keep him out of U.S. hands in the first place:
"Russia fiercely fought Nikulin’s extradition from the Czech Republic, where he was residing, saying it wanted to try Nikulin on computer hacking charges of its own."
So why is there so much interest in him now on the part of Russia?
Bloomberg thinks it has found the answer: " Yevgeniy Nikulin is of great interest in a U.S. probe of election meddling, according to a Justice Department official...."
Of course, the reporter quotes an anonymous official, so it's hard to know how credible that claim is. Perhaps he knows more about the 20 Tricks Russians Used to Hack the DNC.
But the whole thing makes you wonder, doesn't it?
What does Russia know about this hacking suspect that the rest of us do not?
