usa
Romanian gets 5 years in prison for hacking Oregon govt network
A Romanian national was sentenced this week to 56 months in federal prison for breaking into an Oregon state government computer network and fr cyberattacks targeting dozens of other U.S. victims. 46-year-old Catalin Dragomir (who used the online handle “inthematrixl”) of Constanta, Romania, pleaded guilty on February 19 to one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of […]
Sextortionist sentenced to 33 years for targeting 145 children
A Canadian man was sentenced to 33 years in prison after pleading guilty to targeting more than 145 children across the United States, some as young as 6 years old, in an eight-year-long sextortion scheme. 40-year-old Ramanan Pathmanathan pleaded guilty on January 30, 2026, to one count of coercion and enticement of a minor and one count […]
Former US execs plead guilty to aiding tech support scammers
Two former executives of a call-tracking and analytics company pleaded guilty to concealing a years-long tech support fraud scheme that victimized individuals worldwide. Former CEO Adam Young (from Miami, Florida) and former CSO Harrison Gevirtz (from Las Vegas, Nevada) admitted to a misprision of a felony charge, which carries a maximum penalty of three years in […]
US and Canada arrest and charge suspected Kimwolf botnet admin
U.S. and Canadian authorities arrested and charged a Canadian man with operating the KimWolf distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet, which infected nearly two million devices worldwide. 23-year-old Jacob Butler (also known online as “Dort”) was arrested by Canadian authorities in Ottawa on Wednesday pursuant to an extradition warrant. According to a criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday […]
FBI: Americans lost over $388 million to scams using crypto ATMs in 2025
The FBI says Americans have lost over $388 million last year to scams using cryptocurrency kiosks, also known as crypto ATMs or Bitcoin ATMs. Cryptocurrency kiosks are physical, standalone electronic terminals (which may or may not require identity verification to prevent money laundering) that resemble bank ATMs and allow users to buy or sell crypto […]
Former govt contractor convicted for wiping dozens of federal databases
A 34-year-old Virginia man was found guilty of conspiring to destroy dozens of government databases after getting fired from his job as a federal contractor. In 2016, Sohaib Akhter and his twin brother and co-defendant Muneeb Akhter were also sentenced to several years in prison after pleading guilty to accessing U.S. State Department systems without authorization and stealing the […]
Americans sentenced for running ‘laptop farms’ for North Korea
Two U.S. nationals were sentenced to 18 months in prison each for operating so-called laptop farms that helped North Korean IT workers fraudulently obtain remote employment at nearly 70 American companies. Matthew Isaac Knoot and Erick Ntekereze Prince are the seventh and eighth U.S.-based “laptop farmers” sent to prison since the start of the year […]
FTC to ban data broker Kochava from selling Americans’ location data
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will ban data broker Kochava and its subsidiary Collective Data Solutions (CDS) from selling location data without consumers’ explicit consent to settle charges brought nearly four years ago. The FTC sued Idaho-based Kochava in August 2022, alleging it collected and sold precise geolocation data from hundreds of millions of mobile devices. […]
US ransomware negotiators get 4 years in prison over BlackCat attacks
Two former employees of cybersecurity incident response companies Sygnia and DigitalMint were sentenced to four years in prison each for targeting U.S. companies in BlackCat (ALPHV) ransomware attacks. 40-year-old Ryan Clifford Goldberg (a former Sygnia incident response manager) and 36-year-old Kevin Tyler Martin (a DigitalMint ransomware negotiator) were charged in November and pleaded guilty in December to conspiracy to […]
Romanian leader of online swatting ring gets 4 years in prison
A Romanian national who led an online swatting ring that targeted more than 75 public officials, multiple journalists, and four religious institutions was sentenced to 4 years in federal prison. Swatting is a dangerous criminal harassment tactic involving making false reports to emergency responders of an ongoing violent threat at a target’s address to provoke an […]