“Brazilian Hacker Faces Charges for Extorting $3.2M in Bitcoin from 300,000 Breached Accounts”
A Brazilian citizen has recently faced charges in the United States for allegedly threatening to release data that was stolen through hacking into a company’s network back in March 2020. Junior Barros De Oliveira, a 29-year-old resident of Curitiba, Brazil, has been accused of four counts of extortionate threats involving information obtained from protected computers, as well as four counts of threatening communications, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The victim in question is a Brazilian subsidiary of a New Jersey-based company. The defendant breached their computers and accessed confidential customer information from approximately 300,000 customers on multiple occasions. De Oliveira went further by sending an email message to the company’s chief executive officer in September 2020, demanding a payment of 300 bitcoins (approximately $3.2 million at the time) in exchange for not selling the data.
In follow-up messages, De Oliveira expressed a willingness to help resolve the security flaw but requested a consulting fee of 75 bitcoins (around $800,000 at the time) from a company representative. The defendant provided instructions on how to make the payment to a Bitcoin wallet.
If convicted, each count of extortionate threats could result in a maximum prison term of 5 years and a fine of $250,000, or twice the value of any gain or loss, whichever is greater. Similarly, each count of threatening communications carries a maximum prison term of 2 years and a maximum fine of $250,000, or twice the value of any gain or loss, whichever is greater.
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