A Kazakh-born man accused of working with Russian intelligence officials to hack over a half-billion Yahoo e-mail accounts has asked a Canadian court to release him on bail.
But prosecutors said Karim Baratov posed an "extremely high flight risk" because of his alleged ties to Russian agents, and argued against his release on April 5.
Baratov's lawyers said his parents will vouch for him if he's released. His father, Akhmet Tokbergenov, told the court through a Russian interpreter that he would turn off the Internet in the family home if the court requested it.
Baratov, 22, said he registered an Internet business in 2014 that made about $81,000 that year registering websites, renting web spaces, and preventing hack attempts on web servers.
But U.S. prosecutors say Baratov was a "hacker-for-hire" paid by Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents Igor Sushchin and Dmitry Dokuchaev, who were also charged in the case.
Baratov has Kazakh origins, arriving in Canada in 2007 and becoming a citizen in 2011. He was arrested last month and faces extradition to the United States.
