According to the complaint, a 27-year-old Russian hacker named Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov traveled to the United States this summer, where he sought out an anonymous Tesla employee who spoke Russian.
After socializing with the unnamed employee, Kriuchkov made an eyebrow-raising offer — saying he’d pay the insider $1 million to introduce malware into the company’s internal computer systems.
The employee, though, didn’t take the bait. Instead, according to the FBI, he notified his employer, which looped in the FBI. Then the FBI helped set up a sting operation in which the employee recorded communications and other evidence.
