Owner of MonsterCloud ransomware remediation firm charged with secret ransom payments
Owner of MonsterCloud ransomware remediation firm charged with secret ransom payments A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of New York indicted Zohar Pinhasi, the 50‑year‑old owner of MonsterCloud LLC, on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and two counts of wire fraud. Prosecutors allege that the Florida‑based ransomware remediation company advertised proprietary decryption tools while, in reality, it covertly paid ransomware operators for keys and then billed victims for recovery services. According to the indictment, MonsterCloud paid ransomware gangs – in one cited case roughly $8,200 and in another about $236,000 – and subsequently charged the affected companies tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars for the same service. The scheme is said to have generated more than $8 million in ransom payments while extracting over $19 million from U.S. and Canadian… Источник: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransomware-recovery-ceo-charged-over-secret-ransom-payments/