Man Behind Hacks of Bush Family and Other Celebs Indicted In the US 65
New submitter criticalmass24 writes: 42-year-old Marcel Lehel Lazar, better known as Guccifer, the hacker that gained unauthorized access to email and social network accounts of high-profile public figures, has been charged in the United States. According to the Department of Justice, "[F]rom December 2012 to January 2014, Lazar hacked into the e-mail and social media accounts of high-profile victims, including a family member of two former U.S. presidents, a former U.S. Cabinet member, a former member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a former presidential adviser. After gaining unauthorized access to their e-mail and social media accounts, Lazar publicly released his victims’ private e-mail correspondence, medical and financial information, and personal photographs. The indictment also alleges that in July and August 2013, Lazar impersonated a victim after compromising the victim’s account." The full indictment can be read online.
Re:So Disappointing (Score:3, Informative)
That's the beauty of the two party scam... one hand washes the other. These guys will never pay for their crimes.
Re:The real news (Score:5, Informative)
I get what you're saying, but in this case it sounds like the Romanians arrested him first for hacking the emails of a member of the European parliament from Romania, probably to keep him leaking any sensitive information he might've seen. In fact, the article states that Lehel had hacked the Bush family emails in 2013 and had publicly taken responsibility for the hack after he leaked the information, and the government didn't care. To me, it sounds like the US Government only got involved because of Colin Powell. Powell was indirectly involved in the hack on the Romanian MP, in that emails between him and the MP were found and leaked. Powell is currently on the board of directors of Salesforce.com, which is an S&P 500 index stock and publicly traded.
If he happened to get any non-public information regarding Powell's company, that could easily cause real monetary damages and would probably constitute wire fraud, which they indicted the hacker on.
The government also said (in the article) that they don't know whether they'll try to extradite him or not. Right now, all they've done is indict him, and as every law professor will tell you, "A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich."
Re:Counter-NSA (Score:3, Informative)
Hacking some e-mail addresses with no data leaks gets you 3-4 years. Stealing millions of EUR, plus kidnapping some people, plus trying to bribe some football teams to "lose" a match gets you the same sentence. And people say there's justice in this world. Pfft.
While I agree that there is some disparity between the punishments mete out between those two crimes, it says right in TFS that "Lazar publicly released his victims’ private e-mail correspondence, medical and financial information, and personal photographs." If that doesn't count as a data leak, then please explain to us what does.