WASHINGTON, November 4 (RIA Novosti) — A US district court in Seattle, Washington, has postponed the opening of the trial into the wire fraud case of a Russian national and alleged cybercriminal Roman Seleznev until May 4, 2015, a court statement said late on Monday.
"The Court, having reviewed the record and files in this case and after a consideration of all relevant information and the circumstances of this case, finds that the ends of justice will best be served by continuing the trial date to May 4, 2015," the statement said.
The document also set a case schedule that begins with the first status conference on December 19, which is a pretrial meeting of the parties, their attorneys and court administration. The deadline for the attorneys to file pretrial motions has been set for January 5.
Roman Seleznev is accused of hatching an international computer fraud scheme to steal credit card numbers to resell them over the Internet.
He is awaiting the trial at a Seattle prison in the United States after he was detained by US secret service agents in the Maldives and extradited first to Guam and later to Washington. The Russian Foreign Ministry and Seleznev's father labeled the extradition as a kidnapping.
In October, US federal prosecutors filed 11 new charges against Seleznev, bringing the total number of charges to 40. US prosecutors claim that between October 2009 and October 2013 Seleznev allegedly hacked into retail point-of-sale systems and installed malicious software to steal more than two million credit card numbers from various businesses. He faces up to 30 years in prison if found guilty.
