Texas Man Convicted of Multiple Federal Criminal Charges for Orchestrating Phishing Attack on Los Angeles County Superior Court

          LOS ANGELES – A suburban Houston resident has been found guilty by a jury of 27 federal criminal charges for hacking into the Los Angeles Superior Court computer system and then using it to send approximately 2 million malicious phishing emails.

          Oriyomi Sadiq Aloba, 33, of Katy, Texas, was found guilty late Thursday afternoon after a three-day trial. The jury found Aloba guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud, one count of attempted wire fraud, one count of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, five counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information, and four counts of aggravated identity theft. Aloba was taken into federal custody immediately after the verdict was read.

          According to the evidence presented at trial, in July 2017, Aloba and his co-conspirators targeted the Los Angeles Superior Court for a phishing attack. During the attack, one court employee’s email account was compromised and sent an email – without her authorization – to co-workers purporting to be from the file hosting service Dropbox. In fact, it was a phishing email that contained a link to a phishing website that asked for the users’ Superior Court email addresses and passwords, court papers state. Thousands of court employees received the Dropbox email and hundreds disclosed their email credentials to the attacker. Multiple court employees’ emails then were used by the attacker to send out millions of phishing emails.

          These additional phishing emails purported to be communications from American Express, Wells Fargo, and other companies, and led victims to a webpage that asked for their banking login credentials, personal identifying information, and credit card information. The link for the fake American Express website used source code that designated Aloba’s email account as the delivery address for the information that the victims input into the website, according to court documents.

          Investigators executed a search warrant at Aloba’s residence in Texas, which revealed a thumb drive in a toilet, a damaged iPhone in a bathroom sink, and – in the closet of a spare bedroom – a laptop computer with a smashed screen that was smeared with fresh blood. Nearby, agents found a broken mug, which apparently was used to smash the laptop computer. At the time of his arrest, Aloba had blood on his hands and agents saw him picking something out of his hands.

          During the search, agents retrieved from the thumb drive and bloody laptop dozens of phishing kits, which is software designed to facilitate a phishing attack, including the American Express phishing kit used in the court attack.

          As a result of the phishing attack, the court suffered monetary losses, including more than $45,000 in employee time paid to respond to the attack that would have otherwise been spent on ordinary work activities. Additionally, there were more than $15,000 in combined actual and intended losses to credit card victims, according to court documents.

          United States District Judge R. Gary Klausner has scheduled a sentencing hearing for October 21, where Aloba will face a statutory maximum sentence of more than 350 years in federal prison.

          Aloba was initially charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney, but the matter was referred to the United States Attorney’s Office for federal prosecution.

          A co-defendant, Robert Charles Nicholson, 28, of Brooklyn, New York, pleaded guilty last month to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for September 30. Aloba’s other three co-defendants remain at large outside the United States.

          This matter was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

          This case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Robyn K. Bacon and Ryan White of the Cyber and Intellectual Property Crimes Section.

Mississippi man sentenced for internet stalking of young Evansville women

Defendant sentenced to 46 months of imprisonment

Evansville – United States Attorney Josh J. Minkler, announced today the sentencing of Orlando Webber, 44, of Columbus, Mississippi for interstate stalking of young women from the Evansville area. Webber was sentenced to forty-six (46) months of imprisonment and 3 years of supervised release following the term of imprisonment by United States District Judge Richard Young in Evansville following a sentencing hearing on July 31, 2019.

For over four years, Webber used the moniker “Lando” to stalk as many as 30 high school-aged young women using various social media outlets. Most victims recall receiving vulgar and sexually explicit communications from Webber when they were 15-16 years old. Each time victims received the stalking messages, they would block him from their accounts, only to have Webber use a different account name to resume the stalking.

“This case should be a warning to anyone considering using social media platforms to sexually harass and stalk others,” said Minkler. “I want to commend the victims in this case for coming forward and assisting the investigators in identifying Webber and finally putting an end to his harassment. The cooperation of the victims not only ended their own harassment, it also prevented others from having to experience Webber’s abusive social media communications in the future.”

In April 2016, Victim 1 contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Cyber Tip Line to report that she and several other Evansville area high school girls were being harassed through their Twitter accounts. The messages included nude photographs of an adult male asking for sexual favors.

Federal law enforcement officials subpoenaed subscriber records and were able to locate Webber, who lived with his mother in Columbus, Mississippi. FBI agents used facial recognition technology to identify Webber after capturing images from a “Lando” social media account based on a tip from one of the victims.

At the time of Webber’s sentencing hearing, some of Webber’s victims appeared in court to describe the negative impact Webber had on their lives by placing them in fear because of his persistent stalking. As many as 30 different young women made reports about Webber’s stalking to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Evansville Police Department. The victims attending the sentencing hearing told the Judge that they finally felt safe again after Webber’s arrest on the stalking charges in May of 2018. Webber has been in custody since his arrest.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Evansville Police Department. The case was prosecuted on behalf of the government by Assistant United States Attorney Todd S. Shellenbarger.

In October 2017, United States Attorney Josh J. Minkler announced a Strategic Plan designed to shape and strengthen the District’s response to its most significant public safety challenges. This prosecution demonstrates the Office’s firm commitment to prosecuting those who exploit children through the use of social media and to work closely with Project Safe Childhood. See United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Indiana Strategic Plan 4.1 and 4.

Irish Man Who Helped Operate The “Silk Road” Website Sentenced In Manhattan Federal Court To Over Six Years In Prison

Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that GARY DAVIS, a/k/a “Libertas,” was sentenced today to 78 months in prison for his role as a member of the small administrative staff of the “Silk Road” website.  Silk Road was an online black market of unprecedented scope.  During its operation from 2011 until 2013, Silk Road was used by thousands of drug dealers and other unlawful vendors to distribute over $200 million worth of illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services to more than 115,000 buyers, and to launder hundreds of millions of dollars derived from those unlawful transactions.  DAVIS previously pled guilty before United States District Judge Jesse M. Furman, who also imposed today’s sentence.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said:  “Gary Davis helped run the Silk Road website – a dark web marketplace for illegal drugs, hacking services, and other criminal activity.  Davis’s arrest, extradition from Ireland, conviction, and prison sentence should send an unmistakable message: the dark web does not cast shadows long enough to protect criminals from the long arm of the law.”

According to the allegations in the Superseding Indictment, court filings, statements made in court, and evidence presented during the 2015 trial of Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road’s founder:

From approximately January 2011 until October 2, 2013, the Silk Road website hosted a sprawling black market bazaar on the Internet, where illegal goods and services were regularly bought and sold by the site’s users.  During its more than two-and-a-half years in operation, Silk Road was used by nearly 4,000 vendors to distribute illicit goods and services to more than 115,000 buyers, including hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs, fake IDs and passports, computer hacking tools and services, counterfeit goods and pirated media, and money laundering services.  In total, more than 1.5 million transactions were conducted over Silk Road, with a total value of more than $213 million in U.S. currency.  Nearly 95 percent of those sales (approximately $183 million worth) were for illegal drugs.

The owner and operator of Silk Road, Ross William Ulbricht, a/k/a “Dread Pirate Roberts,” a/k/a “DPR,” a/k/a “Silk Road,” ran the website with the assistance of a small support staff, including both site administrators and forum moderators.  The site administrators were responsible for, among other things, monitoring user activity on Silk Road for problems, responding to customer service inquiries, and resolving disputes between buyers and vendors.  The forum moderators were responsible for, among other things, monitoring user activity on discussion forums associated with the site, providing guidance to forum users concerning how to conduct business on Silk Road, and reporting any significant problems discussed on the forums to the site administrators and to Ulbricht.

From approximately May 2013 until June 2013, GARY DAVIS, a/k/a “Libertas,” served as a forum moderator for Silk Road.  From approximately June 2013 until October 2, 2013, DAVIS worked as a site administrator on Silk Road.  In his role as a site administrator, DAVIS’s responsibilities included (1) responding to customer support requests from Silk Road users who needed assistance with their buyer or seller accounts on the marketplace; (2) investigating disputes that arose between vendors (e.g., drug dealers) and buyers, including reporting his findings to Ulbricht; and (3) helping enforce the rules for doing business on Silk Road, which had been set by Ulbricht.  For instance, there was a rule against “out of escrow” sales – i.e., sellers and buyers arranging payments off the site to avoid paying Silk Road commissions.  When violations of this rule were discovered, DAVIS had the ability to demote a vendor or refer the vendor (e.g., to Ulbricht) for further discipline.  Ulbricht paid DAVIS a weekly salary for his work as a site administrator.

Shortly after law enforcement shut down the original Silk Road in early October 2013, its virtually identical successor – Silk Road 2.0 – was launched.  From approximately November 2013 until December 2013, DAVIS served as an administrator for Silk Road 2.0.

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In addition to his prison term, GARY DAVIS, 31, of Wicklow, Ireland, was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and to forfeit $25,000.

Mr. Berman praised the outstanding joint efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its New York Special Operations and Cyber Division, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations - Chicago-O’Hare, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Field Division, and the Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation’s New York Field Office.  Mr. Berman also thanked both the Irish Republic’s Computer Crime Investigation Unit of the An Garda Siochana and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs for their valuable assistance and support.

This case is being prosecuted by the Office’s Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit.  Assistant United States Attorneys Michael D. Neff, Eun Young Choi, and Timothy T. Howard are in charge of the prosecution.