Business

3 Charged In Atlanta Indictment For Massive Data Hack

November 10th, 2015

U.S. Attorney John Horn announced the indictment Tuesday of three people for “one of the largest data breaches in U.S. history.”

Jeff Chiu / Associated Press, File

U.S. Attorney John Horn announced the indictment Tuesday of three people for allegedly hacking into the servers of E*TRADE and Scottrade, and gleaning the personal information of more than 10 million customers. Horn called the crime “one of the largest data breaches in U.S. history.”

But he says these were not typical hackers.

“The purpose for the theft of the personal information of the customers was that the defendants were hoping to establish their own brokerage and to reach out and make sales calls to the individuals, which in fact they did,” said Horn. “The purpose was not as much for your sort of your more traditional forms of identity theft like getting credit cards or bank accounts or things like that in their name and stealing their money that way.”

The indictment charges Gery Shalon, Joshua Samuel Aaron and an unidentified hacker with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, three counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, two counts of computer fraud and three counts of aggravated identity theft.

Shalon is an Israeli citizen, and Aaron is an American currently living in Israel. Horn said he could not comment on the status of any extradition procedures but said that Shalon is currently in custody in Israel.

The FBI’s Atlanta office originated an investigation into an E*TRADE server in Atlanta last year. Horn says that led to these charges as well as separate indictments in New York in a related but separate crime.

Between the two crimes, Horn said these defendants are responsible for illegally gathering the personal information of more than 75 million brokerage customers.