Tag Archive for: guilty

Woman pleads guilty to trying to hire fake ‘hitman’ to kill ex-husband

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MONROE COUNTY, MI – A Rockwood woman has pled guilty to attempting to hire a hitman through a fake website to kill her ex-husband.

Wendy Lynn Wein, 52, pled guilty to charges of solicitation of murder and using a computer to commit a crime on Nov. 12, according to Monroe County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

The terms of Wein’s plea agreement include a cap of 108 months in prison on the minimum sentence, officials said. Wein will appear before Monroe Circuit Judge Daniel White for sentencing on Jan. 13, 2022.

In spring 2020, police were contacted by the owner of the website titled “Rent-A-Hitman,” after Wein filled out a “service request form” and asked for a consultation with a professional to help her with an “issue” regarding her ex-husband, according to Michigan State Police.

Tip from fake hit man rental website leads to arrest of woman soliciting murder of ex-husband

The domain was created as a cyber-security test site, police said, adding that the website owner was concerned Wein was serious and could be attempting to kill the man.

Despite using a pseudonym, Wein completed the request with her personal identifying information, officials said.

With assistance from two state police undercover narcotic units, MANTIS and LAWNET, an undercover officer posed as a hitman on July 17 and met with Wein in a South Rockwood parking lot, police said.

During the meeting, Wein offered the undercover officer $5,000 to kill her ex-husband and provided him with an upfront payment to cover travel expenses out of state, police said.

Soon after handing over the payment, Wein was arrested and taken to the Monroe County Jail.

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US citizen pleads guilty to advising DPRK on cryptocurrency • The Register

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A US citizen has admitted to helping the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to establish cryptocurrency capabilities and faces up to 20 years jail for his actions.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) on Monday revealed that Virgil Griffith, a US citizen resident in Singapore, hatched plans in 2018 to help an individual in the hermit kingdom mine cryptocurrency.

In 2019 Griffith visited North Korea and spoke at a local cryptocurrency conference. The DoJ alleges that Griffth and his co-conspirators “provided instruction on how the DPRK could use blockchain and cryptocurrency technology to launder money and evade sanctions” and “how blockchain technology such as ‘smart contracts’ could be used to benefit the DPRK, including in nuclear weapons negotiations with the United States”.

The DoJ alleges that after the conference, Griffith “attempted to recruit other US citizens to travel to North Korea and provide similar services to DPRK persons, and attempted to broker introductions for the DPRK to other cryptocurrency and blockchain service providers”.

North Korea stands accused of multiple attacks on cryptocurrency infrastructure, conducted to help it secure funds it cannot access thanks to international sanctions imposed in protest at the DPRK’s human rights record.

Or, perhaps more accurately, its record of terrible human rights abuses – the United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea found that the nation’s government has conducted “systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations, some amounting to crimes against humanity”.

The USA therefore prohibits exports of almost anything to the DPRK without a licence. And such a licence is not granted easily.

Almost every nation on Earth sanctions the DPRK for those activities, its belligerent pursuit of nuclear weapons,…

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Group pleads guilty to running bulletproof hosting service for criminal gangs, malware payloads

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Four individuals have pleaded guilty to running a bulletproof hosting service used by criminals to launch cyberattacks. 

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) said that Russian nationals Aleksandr Grichishkin and Andrei Skvortsov, alongside Lithuanian Aleksandr Skorodumov and Pavel Stassi, from Estonia, operated a bulletproof host between 2009 and 2015. 

Bulletproof hosting is a service in which a private online infrastructure is offered, and operators will generally turn a blind eye to what customers use their rented domains for. 

Copyright infringement notices are ignored, privacy is marketed as a feature of such services, and bulletproof offerings are the go-to for criminal groups seeking the infrastructure to host malware, establish command-and-control (C2) servers, and host illegal content including malicious software and child pornography. 

However, being willing to ignore the transgressions of clients does not mean that law enforcement will take the same stance, and in this case, the group has been charged with conspiring to engage in a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO).

According to the DoJ, the group rented out servers and domains that were used in criminal campaigns including attacks against US companies and financial organizations. 

Malware including the Zeus and SpyEye Trojans, Citadel Trojan and credential stealer, and the Blackhole exploit kit — used in drive-by downloads to serve payloads to victims — were among those hosted by the bulletproof hosting provider. 

“A key service provided by the defendants was helping their clients to evade detection by law enforcement and continue their crimes uninterrupted; the defendants did so by monitoring sites used to blocklist technical infrastructure used for crime, moving “flagged” content to new infrastructure, and registering all such infrastructure under false or stolen identities,” prosecutors say. 

All four have pleaded guilty to one count of the RICO charge in the US District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan and they may each face up to 20 years in prison. Sentencing has been set individually between June and…

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Former Trillium Health employee pleads guilty to hacking coworkers

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WHECTV


Created: April 05, 2021 02:43 PM



ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — The former Trillium Health employee accused of hacking into computer files of multiple co-workers pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and related activity in connection with computers.

Ameer Elashmawy, 28, was an IT coordinator at Trillium when a supervisor found files on his computer with compromising photos of co-workers, as well as the user names and passwords for their social media accounts. 

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