I imagine the general assumption is that you don't realize that you've been ID'ed. That they traveled before and nothing happened so traveling again isn't a big deal because all the "tricks" they used to cover their tracks worked.

I would imagine that is lot more likely that is just only the official story rather than what actually happens behind the scenes in these situations.

In the background there could be deals with the countries protecting them or with the target directly or a existing deal they had is off now. It may even be unrelated, wasn't worth expending the diplomatic capital before, but they are a connection to someone else more important and so on.

It could also be the targets were captured in a illegal way, no country wants to be diplomatically humiliated and the prosecuting one wouldn't want to disclose their covert ops capabilities.

Announced News is more often only a Press Release, we shouldn't be taking them literally.

There could be errors happening outside their control. Planes are sometimes rerouted to different countries for different reasons, but mainly weather-related. I've heard stories of travel agencies f**ing up travel planes because of wrong data, and people suing them because of unexcepted stops. Or the good old "they planned for Australia, but ended in Austria"-story. Happens far too often.. There are many targets where people confuse a city or country with a different target.

From the other point of view, the abundance of stories when the high-profile criminal was catched doing something stupid, and the relative absence of ones when the criminal was catched in some clever way may mean the law enforcement is doing their job poorly.

Hypothetically, how would someone know there was a warrant out for their arrest in another country? That doesn’t seem like public information.

I figure most cyber criminals assume they are untraceable until they get arrested.

The human brain is just really bad at evaluating risk, especially over long periods of time. A lot of people are wanted overseas for years or even decades without anything happening, which makes it hard to maintain the mindset of being at risk without falling back to "eh, I've been fine this long"; a lot of them do foreign travel anyway and get away with it, which makes it hard to not fall into "what's one more vacation to a extradition-friendly country".

How can you ID these guys if they get a new passport. Changed hairstyle and do some surgery to the face?

Italian and Greek airports: the bane of otherwise untouchable slavic cybercriminals since 1994

When you're living in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine (Donetsk), I can see why you might run that risk.

> Sources close to the investigation say Yuriy Igorevich Rybtsov, a 41-year-old from the Russia-controlled city of Donetsk, Ukraine

I don't think it was casual traveling but getting out of a wartorn country.

Just look at the profile pics of these people and you'll get the answer. They like to show bling, have a perceived invulnerability shield around them, and like to spend the ill gotten gains.