Tag: Hector Monsegur

Bump and Update from 5/25/14: As expected, Anonymou Sabu, aka Hector Monsegur, was sentenced to time served today. The judge called his cooperation "extraordinary." See below for the link to his online postings that resulted in his bail being revoked and serving 7 months.

After three years, Anonymou Sabu, aka Hector Monsegur, will finally face a federal judge for sentencing on May 27. The infamous former member of Lulzsec and Anonymous, who agreed to cooperate the night of his arrest on June 7, 2011, agreed to plead guilty to 12 felonies in August, 2011, including nine counts related to computer hacking; one count of credit card fraud; one count of conspiring to commit bank fraud, and one count of aggravated identity theft. Charges pending in four other federal districts were dropped as part of his deal. His plea agreement is here.

The maximum possible sentence for the 12 counts is 122 years. His sentencing guidelines call for a 259 to 317 months sentence (2 years of which are a mandatory minimum.) His guidelines are based on a total loss amount of $20 million to $50 million (the loss caused by his direct participation was $1.5 to $2 million).

As a reward for his cooperation, the Government is seeking no jail time -- a sentence of time served -- with the served part being 7 months he spent in pretrial detention in 2012 after he violated his plea agreement by posting online without authorization and had his bond revoked. [More....]

Here's Sabu on December 25 taking credit for the Stratfor hack:

We did the hack under #antisec which is an operation within anonymous.... we are decentralized

Here's what was taken from Stratfor and released:

860,000 usernames, emails, and md5-hashed passwords; data from 75,000 credit cards, including security codes used for no card present transactions; and over 2.5 million Stratfor emails, internal Stratfor documents from the company’s intranet, and support tickets from it.stratfor.com.

While Sabu had his associates and followers thinking he was on the run, he was actually encouraging others to commit the same crimes he always had, except this time under the direction of the FBI. [More...]

At his change of plea hearing (transcript here) Anonymous/LulzSec hacker Hector Monsegur, aka Sabu, was asked to explain in his own words what he did wrong. The Government said Sabu would read from a statement. I think Sabu's explanation of the fraud counts is interesting to anyone concerned about identity theft.

Credit Card Fraud:

With the use of my computer I obtained dozens of credit card numbers of other people from an online site which provided stolen credit card numbers. I also hacked into the computers of two companies. I used these credit card numbers without authorization to pay my own bills as well as gave them to others to make fraudulent purchases. More than $1,000 in charges resulted from the use of these stolen numbers over the course of a one-year period. I knew my conduct was illegal.

[More...]