2 million in rewards posted for accused SEC hackers
The U.S. government embarked on a public awareness campaign
Wednesday seeking help in the apprehension of two Ukrainian men accused of
hacking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The State Department
offered rewards of up to $1 million apiece for information leading to the
arrest or conviction of Artem Radchenko and Oleksandr Ieremenko.
The bounty that comes more than a year after the pair were
indicted in a scheme to breach an SEC database, steal nonpublic information and
then sell it for a profit.
The Secret Service, meanwhile, sent a series of tweets
highlighting existing charges against the pair, and asked other Twitter users
to provide more information. The effort to breach an SEC database resulted in
more than $4.5 million in profit, the Secret Service tweeted.
“As their criminal reach is worldwide, we welcome the
cooperation and coordination of all governments to bring these criminals to
justice and protect innocent citizens throughout the world,” Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo said in a statement.
The bounty is offered as part of the State Department’s
Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program.
The SEC and Department of Justice in January 2019 announced
charges in connection with a plot to hack the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering,
Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR) system, which companies use to file information
with the financial regulator. According to the indictment, hackers stole data
and then passed it to different groups of financial traders, who made
profitable financial transactions based on it.
Ieremenko and Radchenko were charged with securities fraud
conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, computer fraud conspiracy, wire fraud and
computer fraud. Radchenko allegedly recruited Ieremenko and other members of
the scheme.
Ieremenko has been on the lam since 2015, when he allegedly
conspired with another group of traders to carry out an unrelated hack against
newswire distribution companies to steal press releases, and then make
financial trades on unreleased market information. U.S. prosecutors also have
alleged that Ieremenko was in regular contact with another hacker Yevgeniy
Nikulin, who was found guilty in July of stealing data from LinkedIn and
Formspring.
During a search of a hard drive belonging to Ieremenko,
prosecutors alleged, they uncovered evidence that he was involved in a hack
that resulted in the theft of more than 117 million usernames and passwords.
Ieremenko also filmed a video of himself in 2012 driving to a meeting in a
Moscow motel where he said he planned to meet with a summit of “bad
motherf—ers,” the Justice Department said.
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