Cyber Hack · BBC World Service

Evil Corp: 4. The insider

November 10, 2025·33 min·2 clips

Tank fled the FBI in an Audi S8 with a 500-horsepower Lamborghini engine, running a red light with police behind him before disappearing into Donetsk's network of connections.

The call starts in federal prison. The man on the line says to call him Slava, while the narration says he is Tank, a figure whose identity has stayed slippery. He had not spoken to reporters before. Born Vyacheslav Konchukov in Ukraine in 1986, he later landed on the FBI's most wanted list at 29. Then the story gets less mythical and more practical. Tank says he kept looking for ways to make the money-making process work better. Jabber was the breakthrough. By asking the Zeus author to add Jabber messaging to the code, he could get a ping whenever a victim tried to log in. That changed the job. A login was no longer stale data sitting somewhere. It was a live opening. After that, he needed people with roles: phishing, money mules in the United States, and movers who could push funds through Eastern Europe and Russia, then back to him in Donetsk. The office sounds almost plain. In central Donetsk, on the fourth floor, there was a meeting room, coffee by the entrance, bare surroundings, and one comfortable chair. The hours tell you why Donetsk worked. Tank says they worked from about 2pm until midnight, overlapping with the American day when victims were at their computers. Then came the money. British and American authorities say the crew stole millions, while Tank says the FBI wildly exaggerated the scale. He does admit one sharp number. At the peak, he says he personally made around $200,000 a month, though he will not give a total. The restitution is huge. A court ordered him to pay $54 million, but he says there is no hidden fortune. His body language does some talking here. Asked about property, cash, or anything that lasted, he acts as if he once threw money out of his pockets. The detail is dry and revealing. He says he changed cars like clothes, and suddenly the story is not just code and forums. It is office hours, easy money, and excess with fingerprints on it.

As heard by us

A prison interview turns cybercrime logistics into a cold, tightly reported story.

A prison call with Slava, the former Jabber Zeus boss better known as Tank, gives the episode its shape as it follows a crew that built a phishing operation, used money mules, and ran the scheme from Donetsk.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want the man behind Jabber Zeus explaining the scheme from a federal prison.

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