Federal prosecutors in California have charged an alleged member of the Sector 16 hacker group, Russian citizen Artem Vladimirovich Revinsky. He is suspected of hacking into and damaging critical oil and gas infrastructure in several countries. According to Bloomberg, citing case materials, Revinsky I confess He pleaded guilty himself and entered into a plea deal.
Revinsky, who was primarily residing in Russia, was arrested on November 2, 2025, while traveling to the Dominican Republic. From there, the suspect was flown to New Jersey and taken into custody. The Russian lawyer, John Targowski, confirmed the circumstances of the arrest to the news agency. He declined further comment.
Nearly six months later, on April 30, 2026, Revinsky entered into a plea deal in hopes of reducing the sentence sought by the prosecutor’s office. Depending on the amount of the charges, the hacker faces up to 27 years in prison, Bloomberg claims. Meduza was unable to find the case file Website California courts.
According to documents filed in federal court, Revinsky was part of a hacking group known as Sector 16. The former US Department of Justice Announce A reward of half a million dollars for anyone who provides information that helps in the arrest of members of the group. US law enforcement officials describe Sector 16 as an amateur group that uses “rudimentary hacking methods to access industrial control systems.” It broke off from another group, called the People’s Cyber Army of Russia or CARR, and gained prominence in 2025.
Revinsky, according to law enforcement authorities, helped gain access to critical oil and gas infrastructure systems not only in the United States, but also in Ukraine, Germany, France and Latvia. Prosecutors said the targets were primarily countries “considered enemies of the Russian government.”
The case materials contain at least three episodes of attacks on industrial infrastructure in which Revinsky was allegedly involved. Thus, in January 2025, hackers from Sector 16 breached an unnamed oil industry facility in Texas. Then hackers He succeeded Access to the SCADA system that controls oil pumps and oil tanks.
That same year, the group hacked an oil and gas facility in North Dakota and then devised a plan to sell access to it to the Russian government. “Facilities in New York and Pennsylvania” were also successfully hacked, but whether we are talking about refineries or any other facilities is unknown.
The case materials also describe planned attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which group members discussed. According to one plan, the hackers intended to disable the entire electricity network of Ukraine for three days and receive a reward of five million rubles for this. “The project has already been launched. The money has already been paid,” Revinsky wrote in text messages cited in the case materials and described by Bloomberg. Judging by the fact that such large and prolonged power outages were not recorded in Ukraine during the war, the hackers were unable to implement these plans.
In another episode, which occurred in September 2025, hackers gained access to a gas facility in Poltava. US government prosecutors allege that Revinsky discussed in text messages a plan to use this access to cause physical damage to infrastructure. To achieve this, it was proposed to deform the gas pipeline and increase the load on the ventilation and gas exhaust equipment. According to prosecutors, hackers from Sector 16 discussed an offer to receive $75,000 if they could cause an explosion at a facility in Poltava. The group also planned to sell its services to the Russian government. According to prosecutors, Revinsky prepared a business proposal for a cyberattack on a facility in Poltava, and announced “fires and explosions” that “could lead to the death of people and the destruction of equipment.”
The agency’s publication, which examined database leaks and information from the SPARK-Interfax system, find outthat in 2023 Revinsky held the position of chief specialist of the Analytics Unit of the Special Projects Service of the Special Economic Zone “Alabuga” in Tatarstan. Whether this was his main place of work is unknown. For the entire year 2023, he earned 2.1 million rubles in this capacity.
Alabuga is famous for the fact that the production of Shahed-type UAVs, originally developed in Iran, was localized and then significantly expanded. Now, Al-Shahed and its modifications are used almost daily during air attacks on targets in Ukraine.