NEW YORK, Nov. 10 (UPI) — A cyber attack on the United States’ largest investment banking institution last year was part of an even larger global breach that earned the culprits hundred of millions of illicit dollars — in what authorities say is the largest cyber conspiracy in history.
An indictment in the sweeping investigation, unsealed Tuesday, described a complex multi-year criminal enterprise that spun an illicit web involving multiple financial institutions, online gambling operations and various schemes that netted the culprits untold millions.
The indictment tied three suspects — two Israelis and an American believed to be living in Russia — to previous attacks on various financial institutions, including the major hack last year of Wall Street giant JPMorgan Chase.
Authorities say the breaches collectively exposed the personal data of at least 100 million people. Between June and August 2014 alone, the conspirators hacked JPMorgan Chase — the largest U.S. bank in terms of assets — and took records of 83 million customers, investigators said.
The co-conspirators — identified as Gery Shalon, Joshua Aaron and Ziv Orenstein in the indictment — allegedly deceived banking institutions into processing payments for the online casino companies, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. Shalon and Orenstein were arrested in Israel in July but Aaron, who is believed to be living in Moscow, remains at large.
“We have exposed a cyber criminal enterprise that, for years, successfully and secretly hacked into the networks of a dozen companies, stealing the personal information of over a hundred million people,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said during a news conference in New York City.
Officials on Tuesday announced 23 new criminal counts against Shalon, Aaron and Orenstein, related to securities and wire fraud — to go with the 11 counts they received this summer.
Investigators outlined multiple aspects of the enterprise, which they say operated in some fashion between 2007 and 2015. Authorities say it involved “pump and dump” manipulation of publicly traded stock, mining of nonpublic corporate information, money laundering, wire fraud, identity theft, securities fraud, and other illegal activity.
“They colluded with corrupt international bank officials who willfully ignored its criminal nature in order to profit from, as a co-conspirator described it to Shalon, their payment processing ‘casino/software/pharmaceutical cocktail,’” the indictment says.
Authorities said the operation had a large global reach, from the United States to Israel to Switzerland to the Mediterranean. Other financial operations, like E*Trade Financial Corp., and Scottrade Financial Services Inc., were also targeted by hackers, investigators said.
The indictment identifies Shalon as the leader of the operation and says he directed co-conspirators to hack into banking institutions to keep the schemes going — schemes officials say netted the Israeli citizen at least $100 million in illicit profits.
“We appreciate the strong partnership with law enforcement in bringing the criminals to justice,” JPMorgan Chase & Co., said in a statement Tuesday. “As we did here, we continue to cooperate with law enforcement in fighting cybercrime.”
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