Canadian man arrested over Yahoo data hack is innocent and won't flee the country, his parents say

The parents of a Canadian man accused of hacking Yahoo servers for Russian agents have insisted he is innocent and will not flee the country if he is let out on bail.

Karim Baratov was charged in connection with the hack of 500 million Yahoo email accounts, along with two Russian intelligence officials and a Latvian man who was once on the FBI’s Most Wanted Cyber Criminals list.

Lawyers for the 22-year-old said they would fight extradition from Canada and insisted he was innocent of all charges, which they suggested were “politically motivated”. Moscow has denied Russia's security service, the FSB, were involved in the data breach.

Mr Baratov is accused of using the information taken from the Yahoo accounts, such as passwords and personal data, to gain access to email accounts hosted by other providers like Google.

He is alleged to have given this information to the Russians.

The hacking is believed to have begun as early as 2014, two years before it was discovered in September 2016. The information was still being used at the end of 2016, according to US officials.

America’s acting Attorney General, Mary McCord, called it “one of the largest data breaches in US history”.

It is not believed to be linked to separate allegations that Russian hackers attempted to disrupt the US general election.

Insisting their son was not a flight risk, Mr Baratov's parents, Akhmet Tokbergenov and Dinara Tokbergenova, begged Canadian authorities to let their son out of jail, where he remains in custody ahead of his bail hearing on 5 April.

Speaking from their home in Ancaster, Ontario, Ms Tokbergenova told CNN: "We are just four of us. He would never leave us. Because he always feels like he is responsible for us.

"And he knows I would die if he would go somewhere."

When the news of Baratov’s indictment was first announced, pictures of him posing with an Aston Martin and a Mercedes parked in his driveway appeared on social media.

A post on his Facebook page, which has since been made private, said he started to focus on developing “online projects” and “really move my business to the next level” when he was suspended from school temporarily for threatening to kill his ex-friend “as a joke”.

He added that he had been able to afford to drive a BMW 7 series and pay off a mortgage while still in high school.

But his parents dismiss this as the typical bragging of a young man and said it was not true that he lived an extravagant lifestyle.

Mr Tokbergenov told the US broadcaster: "Young men are always trying to show their success and to appear like they are successful more than they are."

His wife added: “He was creating an image, I think. But in reality, he's a different person. He's so kind and he's so quiet”,

Although his lawyer described Mr Baratov as an “entrepreneur” his parents declined to say what time of business he was involved in other than saying he “operated computer business” and “was very good in web creating”.

The family is originally from Kazakhstan but moved to Canada in 2007 in search of a better life when he was 12.

Mr Baratov does not share their surname as he is named in honour of his maternal grandfather – a common Kazakh tradition.

He reportedly quickly found friends and settled into his new life. His parents say he is solely a Canadian citizen with a Canadian passport but US officials insist he also has Kazakh citizenship.

​Kazahkstan was part of the Soviet Union until 1991 but is now an independent state – though the Russian language is still used for some official business.

The couple insist, as ethnic Kazakhs, they are not Russian despite the fact they speak the language.

"We're not Russian, we're Kazakh people, and Kazakh people is so very different than Russian”, Mr Tokbergenov said.

Although he travels to Russia several times a year on business he said his son has never been there.

Regarding the Yahoo data breach, Mr Tokbergenov said: "It's bad. It's not my son. And personally, I prefer to stay (away) from Russian government, from those implicated officers, from that organisation I don't even want to mention."