Bloke gets six months for fixing up Russia's US election trolls with bank accounts, fake identities
A California man who provided bank accounts to Russian online trolls seeking to monkey with America's 2016 elections will spend the next six months or so behind bars.
Richard Pinedo was sentenced on Wednesday in a Washington DC district court some eight months after admitting to one count of identity fraud in a plea deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office. Pinedo, 28, said that for three years up to December 2017 he ran a website that specialized in the sale of American bank account numbers.
Among his customers were the Russia-based Internet Research Agency – which pumped out Facebook ads and posts that sought to divide America, muddying the waters between truth and fiction, and sowing a little chaos among the population. All of which suited its masters in the Kremlin.
