U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York on Friday awarded $525,673.81 in attorneys' fees to Google after finding that two defendants in a civil RICO suit engaged in a "willful campaign to resist discovery and mislead the court."

Google, through its attorneys at King & Spalding, filed suit in December 2021, arguing that the named defendants—Dmitry Starovikov and Alexander Filippov—were "Russian cybercriminals who have silently infiltrated more than a million computers and other devices around the globe."

The King & Spalding team argued that Starovikov and Filippov, who are both Russian nationals residing in Russia, worked with others to create an illicit network called a botnet, and through the botnet stole Google users' personal information.