Just saying in the article that's what they're being legally charged for, and that already comes with hefty maximum sentences.
They are clearly associated with the hack, but that can be tacked on after further investigation and cross-examination. The money laundering is an easier opening target.
I suspect that when you steal this amount of money, the law is the least of your worries. There are likely people who will hunt these hackers to the ends of the earth for what they've done. For their sake, they better cover their tracks well.
Racketeering and money laundering seems to be the Fed's catch-all charges for "Your users may have been committing crimes" - the money laundering might come when you take money from 'criminals', at a guess.
They have charged Kim Dotcom with the same offenses for running megaupload, and I think that they chucked in wire fraud as well.
It's worrying how vague these 'crimes' are, it tips the balance of power too far in the direction of the government agency.
If this happened in the US they'd be slammed to the concrete in handcuffs, tried as an adult, and thrown in prison for 10 years for various wire fraud, hacking, and probably some sort of terrorist charges.
They focus on payment information as those are the most serious crimes and would provide the harshest sentence. Trading hacked emails does not carry the same weight as trading hacked credit card details.
I believe that DDOS exthortionists and encryptor malware operators should be prosecuted, and I don't see how this can be done without money tracking with things like AML.
(especially DDOS criminals.. they are the reason some sites switch from plain servers to Cloudflare, which is pretty bad for anonymous browsing.)
Making it a crime will simply ensure that the authorities are not made aware, so rather good news for the criminal hackers.
It's a bit like the idea of an economist (iirc and I forgot the name) that receiving or demanding a bribe should be a crime but that paying one should not, and that someone convicted for receiving a bribe should be also made to pay the money back.
This creates a strong incentive for the person paying a bribe to go public and report it to the police and increases the risk of demanding a bribe.
These attackers are probably brilliant enough to make their mark in the honest tech business world. I suppose they are driven by the challenge of the crime.
You are forgetting ransom payments for hijacking corporate computer systems. Or money laundering. I am sure there are more. Not being a criminal I don't know what they are.
that's great and all, but is the money going to go to people who lost money in various hacks and raids, or is it going to pad the pockets of US-based regulatory organizations?
The article does say that it is mostly to combat people harvesting and selling large number of accounts/passwords which seems reasonable to me. It is scary that they could go after people sharing with a friend with up to a year in jail though.
They are clearly associated with the hack, but that can be tacked on after further investigation and cross-examination. The money laundering is an easier opening target.
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