A young Russian citizen and his co-conspirators came within an inch of carrying out a major ransomware attack against Tesla - unaware that their target had already turned them in.

Last week, the United States Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) unsealed a criminal complaint against a conspirator in a thwarted ransomware plot against the electric car maker Tesla.

On Aug. 22, the Bureau arrested 27 year-old Russian citizen Pavel Kriuchkov in Los Angeles, who had allegedly spent much of his month in the U.S. attempting to recruit a Tesla staffer at the firm's Gigafactory Nevada site to collude on a nefarious "special project."

That "special project" came with a lucrative incentive — a bribe of $500,000, later upped to $1 million. A small advance payment was to have been paid into the staffer's Bitcoin (BTC) wallet, installed using a Tor browser to evade detection.

In return for the bribe, the staffer was asked to assist in the installation of a targeted malware attack against Tesla — a two-stage plot involving a distributed denial of service attack, followed by an exfiltration of sensitive company data. 

The plan was to hold Tesla to ransom under threat of dumping the information publicly. Kriuchkov's conspirators had their eye on a $4 million ransom.