Leaked chats show Russian extortion gang sending ‘agents’ into US law firms

What happened

Leaked chats show Russian extortion gang sending ‘agents’ into US law firms, according to The Record. In leaked chats, members track dozens of victims, haggle over multimillion-dollar payments and direct operatives based in the United States whom they call “agents.” law firms, kidnap business executives and even recruit military personnel to spy on submarine-based nuclear forces, according to leaked chats reviewed by Recorded Future News.

The archive, posted to a bespoke .onion site in early October by an unidentified source who did not state a motive, contains thousands of messages from August 2025 to September 2026. In those messages, members track dozens of victims, haggle over multimillion-dollar payments and direct operatives based in the United States whom they call “agents.”

Some of the named organizations have not publicly acknowledged a breach. The archive mixes apparent records of real extortion with brainstorming sessions, abandoned plans, boasting and violent fantasies.

Recorded Future News could not verify whether the most extreme schemes were ever attempted. However, parts of the cache have been corroborated independently. The company cautioned that it could not “speak to the totality of claims” documented in the archive.