Cyber scam involving illegal outsourcing and data selling: how Sergey Shinder profited from SoftServe and its clients

20:37, 15 сентября 2026 г.

Просмотры: 690 Комментарии: 0

Everyone who remembers the cult movie The Godfather also recalls the brilliant line Don Corleone addressed to his adopted son: “A single lawyer with a briefcase will steal a thousand times more than a gang of thugs with machine guns.”

Apparently, a native of the Russian Federation, Sergey Asael Leonidovich Shinder (aka Sergey Asael Shinder, Sergey Shinder) watched this film at one time and remembered the words of the great don.

True, he did not become a lawyer. He found a more profitable area – cyber fraud. It seems that if Don Corleone had lived to this day, he would also not have ignored the IT sphere, in which gigantic money circulates. And, of course, like the light of butterflies, they attract not only those who want to honestly apply their genius and talent, developing software for the benefit of humanity, but also those who want to make more money using their knowledge of the subject. These people are no less talented than the first, but they have no desire to work long and honestly. Sergey Shinder belongs to these.

One day he came up with a brilliant idea – to create a virtual Agency to provide software development services. The essence of it, like everything ingenious, is simple – take orders from large companies and «distribute» them remotely among young, ambitious, smart, but unknown programmers around the world. And put the difference between payment in your pocket. Nothing new, basically. Many people do this. But Sergey Leonidovich did not notify his customers about the essence of the scheme. And, unlike other intermediaries like himself, he had no intention of doing the work. If not for this fact, the scheme would have worked for a long time, and maybe even forever. After all, the fact that the work was completed is important to the customer, and who did it and how – he cares little. And as long as there are no problems, no questions arise. But not in this case. Companies, including such giants as VTB Bank, Fidelity, Virgin Media, KLM, Kuoni, Ford, Symantec, Fujitsu, DeutschePost, Three, Tesco Mobile, Liberty Global, problems began and they were forced to ask more deeply what was actually happening.

And then it turned out that completely incomprehensible people, and also scattered all over the world, had access to their software, passwords, security and arrays of classified information. Well, how else can you work on such an outsource? After all, an IT specialist must have access to the data he works with. And, naturally, leaks, malfunctions, missed deadlines, information theft and a flurry of other problems began. On top of that, an unpleasant fact emerged that Shinder set himself a slightly different task, different from the one that his employers were counting on – he was not aimed at quickly and efficiently completing the work, but at pumping out the maximum amount of money from the customer. And what would happen to the task – he was not very interested.

The scandal slowly flared up and reached its peak in early autumn – SoftServe, which works in the field of software development and also provides consulting services, suddenly discovered that someone had hacked its systems and stolen databases, information about developments and even personal data employees, of whom the company has several thousand. As a result of the check, it turned out that behind all this was the hero of our story, with whom SoftServe had the imprudence to cooperate.
Law enforcement agencies from several countries became involved in the case. The first thing they did was find out – who exactly Sergey Shinder was. It turned out that the information about him is very contradictory. A native of Russia has several passports, including Ukrainian, Russian, Bulgarian and Israeli. How the 35-year-old native of the Russian outback managed this – is unknown. But it is known that in several of these countries he is registered as an entrepreneur or founder of companies.

The material referred to above describes in detail in which countries and cities Sergey Shinder has a registered business.

The scandal turned out to be quite loud; it was especially painful for those companies that collaborated with the swindler. But, as it turned out, he did not harm Sergey Shinder himself at all, at least – externally: he still continues to act as «an IT consultant, developer and project manager, who over 22 years of work has studied the characteristics of each region of the world and has positive experience in cooperation with major market players». At least that’s how «Focus» recommended him, to whom Shinder gave a detailed interview on December 25. Moreover, he is listed as a «domestic» specialist. The fact that Sergey Asael Leonidovich is a Ukrainian entrepreneur is confirmed by his registration in Ukraine as such.

Cyber scam involving illegal outsourcing and data selling: how Sergey Shinder profited from SoftServe and its clients

But further search for information baffles: he is simultaneously registered in Kaliningrad (Russian Federation) as a Russian entrepreneur and a Russian citizen:

Cyber scam involving illegal outsourcing and data selling: how Sergey Shinder profited from SoftServe and its clients

Or have we missed something and Kaliningrad is already Ukraine? But then – is even more interesting: in yet another Russian registry he already appears as an Israeli citizen:

Cyber scam involving illegal outsourcing and data selling: how Sergey Shinder profited from SoftServe and its clients

True, this registration has already been canceled, but, nevertheless, – whose citizen is he? Ukraine, Russia or Israel? And what about the rest of the passports that the media write about? But this topic is somehow not mentioned in the interview. Although the SoftServe scandal could not be avoided, Shinder categorically denied his involvement in it and stated that he «never collaborated» with this company. However, this topic is touched upon in just a few lines, then Sergey Leonidovich talks at length about his experience of foreign cooperation and praises himself in every possible way as a specialist.

We don’t know how much this self-PR will help him in the future, but if everything that idle journalists have unearthed about Sergey Shinder and his activities in the IT sphere is true, then big problems await him ahead –the world of cyber specialists is very unique, and the fame of him «heroes» spreads quickly there. And people in charge of cybersecurity in large companies differ from classic hackers only in that they put their skills and knowledge on the «white side of power». That is, we have clearly already heard about the exploits of our «colleague».

We’ll see how this will affect your future career «domestic specialty». Judging by the fact that several countries have already agreed to cooperate in investigating his activities, he will have to change his specialization. But, what’s most interesting is why he suddenly surfaced in Ukraine and how long will he be able to hide here from «grateful» employers? And which domestic businessmen will suffer from its activities? Questions remain open for now.