In court papers filed with New York Supreme Court in November 2015, Akhmetshin was described as “a former Soviet military counterintelligence officer” by lawyers for International Mineral Resources (IMR), a Russian mining company who alleged that they had been hacked.

Those documents accuse Akhmetshin of hacking into two computer systems and stolen sensitive and confidential materials as part of an alleged black ops smear campaign against IMR. The allegations were later withdrawn.

The U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. was told in July 2015 that Akhmetshin had arranged the hacking of a mining company’s private records—stealing internal documents and then disseminating them. The corporate espionage case was brought by IMR, who alleged that Akhmetshin was hired by Russian oligarch Andrey Melinchenko, an industrialist worth around $12 billion.