In the summer of 2014, JPMorgan Chase experienced a huge computer hack compromising 83 million customers’ accounts. And on July 21, 2015, four men were finally arrested in connection for schemes involving penny stocks and Bitcoin from Florida to New York to Israel to Cyprus and Russia.
Those arrested include two Florida men, Anthony Murgio and Yuri Lebedev, who were charged with operating an unlicensed Bitcoin exchange, coin.mx and, two Israelis, Gery Shalon and Ziv Orenstein, who were apprehended by local Israeli authorities. A fifth man, Joshua Samuel Aaron, remains at large. It is unclear how all the men are connected.
The court filings unsealed by prosecutors in Manhattan did not mention the attack on JPMorgan’s network last July. Rather, it focused on a campaign that took place for more than a year convincing unsuspected investors to put money into worthless penny stocks. Another focused on unlicensed money-transfer used by criminals to cash in Bitcoin. The two men from Florida, who were the perpetrators of that scheme, created a fraud credit union in New Jersey, called Collectible Club, to stash away assets. The two men arrested from Israel were running a pump-and-dump stock scam that dates back to 2011. Joshua Aaron, the front man for the pump-and-dump scheme and the man still at large, was operating under an alias known as “Mike Shields.” He would communicate with stock promoters in the United States via Shalon’s command.
Prosecutors believe the schemes made millions of dollars for the men involved, who in turn hid their money through bank accounts based in Cyrus.
The five men involved, however, did a poor job in remaining confidential. An affidavit describes the coin.mx account as being registered to Murgio, using his email address and phone number. Similarly, the domain name of the URL for Collectible Club, was registered to a Chris Smith. After tracing back the name, it appeared to be connected to Murgio as well.
Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement: “As alleged, the defendants manipulated trading in U.S. securities from overseas, using fake identities to funnel millions of dollars in unlawful proceeds through a web of international shell companies. Using false and misleading spam emails sent to millions of people, these defendants allegedly directed their pump-and-dump scheme from their computers halfway around the world.”
Prosecutors are working with the FBI to connect these charges to the hacking as well.
Source: Ars Technica
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