The United States Department of Justice has removed two crooks from the Republic of Cyprus—one is a PC programmer associated with digital interruptions and coercion, and the other is a tax criminal with known associations with the fear monger association Hezbollah.
The two suspects—Joshua Polloso Epifaniou, 21, an inhabitant of Nicosia, and Ghassan Diab, 37, a resident of Lebanon—were captured prior a year ago and removed to the United States a weekend ago.
As indicated by the prosecution, Epifaniou led a savage power assault against the Phoenix-based online audit entrance Ripoff Report (ROR) in October 2016 and effectively supersede ROR’s login and secret word security to access its database through a current record related with a ROR worker.
In November 2016, Epifaniou attempted to blackmail the organization by messaging ROR’s CEO with a hyperlink to a video showing Epifaniou’s unapproved access to the ROR CEO’s record, compromising him to freely disperse taken ROR information except if he paid $90,000 inside 48 hours.
Between October 2016 and May 2017, Epifaniou additionally worked with a partner at Glendale-based “Search engine optimization Company” to wrongfully expel protests posted on ROR’s site for whoever keen on paying the organization roughly $3,000 to $5,000 per grumbling evacuation.
As per the court records, Epifaniou and his co-backstabber expelled in any event 100 protests from the undermined ROR database for their “customers,” which could have benefitted the SEO Company somewhere close to $300,000 and $500,000.
Other than ROR, Epifaniou has additionally been blamed for hacking and coercing sites between October 2014 and November 2016, which notwithstanding:
a free internet game distributer situated in Irvine, California;
an equipment organization situated in New York;
an online business webpage headquartered in Innsbrook, Virginia; and
an online games news site possessed by Turner Broadcasting System Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia.
To hack into these sites, Epifaniou either legitimately misused a security defect in it and took its client and client information, or got a bit of the casualty site’s client information from a co-schemer who had hacked into the casualty arrange.
Epifaniou supposedly cheated the casualty sites of $56,850 in bitcoin, and two casualties acquired misfortunes of more than $530,000 from remediation costs related with the episode.
Epifaniou is needed in both the Northern District of Georgia and the District of Arizona. He is charged in the District of Arizona in a 24-tally prosecution with connivance to submit PC hacking, get data from an ensured PC, deliberately harm a secured PC, and take steps to harm an ensured PC.
In the Northern District of Georgia, Epifaniou is charged in a five-check prosecution with connivance to submit wire misrepresentation, wire misrepresentation, scheme to submit PC extortion and data fraud, and blackmail identified with an ensured PC.
Epifaniou is planned for his arraignment before the U.S. Justice Judge Alan J. Baverman in the Northern District of Georgia, on Monday, July 20.
Another Cypriot, named Ghassan Diab, 37, removed on Friday and needed in Florida, has been recognized by the U.S. Equity Department as an individual from Hezbollah, an activist gathering situated in Lebanon.
Diab is planned to participate in the laundering of medication continues, illegal tax avoidance of more than $100,000, contrived to launder a further $100,000, just as blamed for the unlicensed transmission of cash of over $100,000, and unlawful utilization of a two-way specialized gadget to assist the commission of tax evasion.
Diab is accused of an aggregate of 8 government checks, all crimes under Florida law.
