The US law enforcement agency has charged three men believed to be involved in one of the largest data breaches in US history.
According to a statement from US assistant attorney general Leslie R. Caldwell, Vietnamese citizens Viet Quoc Nguyen, 28, and Giang Hoang Vu, 25, and Canadian citizen David-Manuel Santos Da Silva, 33, “allegedly made millions of dollars by stealing over a billion email addresses from email service providers.”
The charges allege that Nguyen and Hoang Vu hacked into at least eight email service providers throughout the US from February 2009 to June 2012. They stole confidential information including over one billion email addresses from the companies’ marketing departments. The data breach was listed by the DoJ during a Congressional inquiry in June 2011 as the largest data breach in US history.
Canada-based David-Manuel Santos Da Silva was charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering for helping Nguyen and Vu to generate revenue from the spam and launder the proceeds.
Vu was arrested by Dutch law enforcement in 2012 and extradited to the US in March 2014. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer fraud in February. He is scheduled to be sentenced on 21 April 2015.
Da Silva was arrested at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on 12 February and is scheduled to be arraigned on 14 March 2015 in Atlanta. Nguyen has so far escaped the long arm of the law and remains on the lam.
US assistant attorney general Leslie R. Caldwell listed the charges as a major step in bringing “international” cyber criminals to justice.
“These men, operating from Vietnam, the Netherlands, and Canada, are accused of carrying out the largest data breach of names and email addresses in the history of the internet,” said Caldwell.
“The defendants allegedly made millions of dollars by stealing over a billion email addresses from email service providers. This case again demonstrates the resolve of the DoJ to bring accused cyber hackers from overseas to face justice in the US.”
