InfoBytes Blog
Federal Judge Sentences Hacker to Eight Years for Cyber Heists that Caused More than $55 Million in Losses
On February 10, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York announced that the Honorable Kiyo A. Matsumoto levied an eight year prison sentence against a Turkish citizen charged with organizing and carrying out three cyber-attacks on global financial institutions between 2011 and 2013 which resulted in more than $55 million in losses. Last March, the defendant pleaded guilty to “computer intrusion conspiracy, access device fraud conspiracy, and effecting transactions with unauthorized access devices.” Specifically, the defendant and his associates were alleged to have repeatedly hacked into debit card processing systems, manipulated account balances, stole customers’ PINs, and transferred that information to associates who then encoded debit cards with the stolen data in order to make fraudulent ATM withdrawals. The DOJ further alleged that the hackers targeted databases companies maintained for prepaid debit cards and effectively eliminated the card accounts’ withdrawal limits in what are called “unlimited operations.” The defendant was also ordered to pay $55,080,226.14 in restitution as part of his sentence.