NEW YORK, Sept 8, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - A Russian who reaped tens of millions of dollars trading US stocks using hacked, unreleased company earnings reports was sentenced Thursday to nine years in prison.

Businessman Vladislav Klyushin, 42, was convicted in February for hacking and securities fraud in federal court in Boston, where he was tried after being extradited from Switzerland in December 2021.

Klyushin, who reportedly had close contacts in the Kremlin, owned a Moscow information technology firm named M-13.

His firm helped partners and clients hack into the computers of two US businesses that publicly listed companies use to file official financial reports.

During 2018-2020, they obtained filings from hundreds of companies on earnings and other matters, allowing them to trade the shares before the information went public, according to the Justice Department.

Investing $9 million over that period, they pulled in nearly $100 million on the trades, the Justice Department said.

Klyushin himself earned $34 million, in his own trades and in commissions for helping others invest.

In addition to his prison sentence, he was ordered to forfeit his $34 million in profits and pay an unspecified amount in restitution for damages.

Four others were charged with Klyushin but they all remain at large.

Klyushin's name has been mentioned as someone that Washington could trade with Moscow for the release of one of the Americans jailed there, for example former Marine and computer security official Paul Whelan, who was sentenced to prison by a Russian court in 2020 for spying.