A Russian man was sentenced to 46 months in jail for running a network of hijacked computers.
Maxim Senakh was arrested for running the Ebury botnet that he used to steal login names and passwords from the computers which run on Linux operating system.
In 2015, he was arrested in Finland and was extradited to the US to face cyber security and computer fraud charges.
It is alleged that he infected thousands of computers that were used in a variety of scams.
"As society becomes more reliant on computers, cyber criminals like Senakh pose a serious threat," said acting US attorney Gregory Brooker in a statement.
The US Department of Justice says “the computers he and his accomplices hijacked were used to "generate and redirect" net traffic to help with click fraud schemes. These use bogus clicks on web ads to generate cash.”
The computers used by Senakh were also used to generate and distribute junk email or spam. He was running the spam and click fraud scams and others millions of dollars, said the DoJ.
He will be deported from the US once he would complete his sentence.
However, Russian authorities condemned his arrest.