One twentysomething named Andrei said it was and still is common practice for people to steal or buy credit card numbers from hackers to make fraudulent purchases of $10 to $15 that companies such as Visa and MasterCard find difficult to trace.

"Here it is difficult for a person to live on honest wages," he said, speaking on the condition that his last name not be used.

Of the other five people named in Ivanov's plea agreement as co-conspirators, one reportedly moved to Belarus, one was known to Ivanov only by his online alias and two declined to talk. The last one, Vladimir, denies the allegations. Vladimir, 21, is tall, blond and well-mannered. He works in sales at a metal-rolling factory. He has said that while he's a friend of Ivanov's, he has no knowledge of the extortions.

He said that he helped Ivanov find a lawyer to go over a letter for the business proposal that Ivanov sent to companies whose systems he hacked into. Vladimir, who also spoke on the condition that his last name not be used, believes the note itself isn't illegal.

"He was proposing to help companies. There is nothing wrong about that," Vladimir said.

U.S. authorities, however, believe that Vladimir may be the central coordinator of the hacking scheme in this city. Ivanov said he had Vladimir's help when he committed a wide range of computer break-ins, including intrusions into the systems of and extorting 11 companies in four states.

"I was invited . . . by different group of people which I connected to Vladimir. The purpose of this visit was to do something illegal, to break into companies, obtain credit cards and make some kind of frauds to obtain money," Ivanov said in one of the sealed interviews.

As for Michael, Ivanov said he was one of the people who taught him how to hack. Michael, a tall, dark-haired boy-next-door type who sometimes moonlights as a disc jockey and loves to snowboard, admits that he participated in some of the cases Gorshkov and Ivanov are being punished for but says his involvement was mostly limited to searching for valuable information in computer systems that had already been compromised. He said others hacked into the systems and others extorted the companies.

Michael said he now rarely participates in hacking extortions but has moved on to a new scheme: finding and selling personal or proprietary information on the Internet. It's more discreet and sometimes more lucrative. Recent sales prices: $15,000 for a batch of e-mails to and from an executive at a major law firm and his apparent mistress and $75,000 for the strategic plans of a company.

"I don't do anything that's illegal in the Russian Federation," Michael shrugs, "so I don't care if the Americans are after me."

The anonymity of it makes this type of work easier. He said he could never imagine mugging an old woman to steal her purse or robbing a house but has no qualms about taking someone's credit card number online.

His mother, a bookkeeper, knows of his hacking, Michael said, and so did his first wife. His second wife, a lawyer he married a few months ago, does not and he plans on keeping it that way.

"In this community, it's not proper to ask questions. No one asks you how much you make, and no one asks you how you made it," he said.

Things are basically the same, he said, as when Gorshkov and Ivanov left on their ill-fated trip. Except now he makes sure to check the FBI's most-wanted list every few weeks and avoids leaving the country. Just in case.