Gery Shalon, Ziv Orenstein and Joshua Samuel Aaron are charged with hacks, cyberattacks, unlawful gambling schemes, securities market manipulating, illicit payment processing and running an illegal bitcoin exchange.
The indictment published by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and signed by Preet Bharara, famous for prosecuting Charlie Shrem and Ross Ulbricht, charges three defendants with twenty-three different crimes including the famous hacking of JPMorgan Chase in 2014. The latter involved stealing personal data of 83 million customers of the largest US bank.
Gery Shalon and Ziv Orenstein, Israeli citizens, were arrested in Israel in July 2015, simultaneously with Yuri Lebedev and Anthony R. Murgio, apprehended in Florida – a story which has been covered by CoinFox in detail. Joshua Samuel Aaron, their alleged accomplice, a US citizen, remains fugitive. They are charged with laundering hundreds of millions of dollars with the help of a powerful cybercrime network, which organised hacks and cyberattacks, operated illegal online pharmacies and casinos and sold fake and malicious anti-virus software.
Coin.mx, an unlicensed bitcoin exchange owned by Shalon and allegedly used to launder bitcoins paid as ransom to the Cryptowall hackers, seems to be a link in the criminal chain.
Alexey Tereshchenko