British Hacker Sentenced to 5 Years for Blackmailing U.S. Companies

A UK man who threatened to publicly release stolen confidential
information unless the victims agreed to fulfill his digital
extortion demands has finally pleaded guilty on Monday at U.S.
federal district court in St. Louis, Missouri.

Nathan Francis Wyatt , 39, who is a key member
of the infamous international hacking group ‘The Dark Overlord,’
has been sentenced^[1]
to five years in prison and ordered to pay $1,467,048 in
restitution to his victims.

Wyatt, who was extradited to the United States^[2] late last year after
being held for over two years in the United Kingdom, has pleaded
guilty to conspiring to commit aggravated identity theft and
computer fraud.

U.K. police first arrested Wyatt in September 2016 during an
investigation into the hacking of an iCloud account belonging to
Pippa Middleton, the younger sister of the British royal family
member Duchess of Cambridge, and stealing 3,000 images of her.

Though he was released in that case without charge due to lack
of evidence, Wyatt was again arrested in September 2017 over
hacking companies, credit card frauds, and blackmailing schemes to
extort money from the victims.

According to court documents, Wyatt has attacked multiple
healthcare providers and accounting firms in Missouri, Illinois,
and Georgia states as a member of The Dark Overlord since February
2016, but the court documents do not name the companies.

The Dark Overlord (TDO) is infamous for remotely accessing the
computer networks of victim companies in the United States and then
stealing sensitive data, like patient medical records and personal
identifying information.

“The Dark Overlord has victimized innumerable employers in the
United States, many of them repeatedly,” said U.S Attorney Jeff
Jensen. “I am grateful to the victims who came forward despite
ransom threats and to the prosecutors and agents who were the first
to catch and punish a member of The Dark Overlord in the United
States.”

Wyatt admitted that his hacking gang members typically worked by
obtaining sensitive data from victim companies and then threatening
them to release the stolen data unless they paid a ransom of
between $75,000 and $350,000 in bitcoin.

Wyatt’s role at TDO was directly contacting victims and
maintaining communication, payment, and virtual private network
accounts that he used to send threatening and extortionate messages
to victims and their family and friends.

In one such threatening message, Wyatt sent to the victims
involved the daughter of one of the owners of the Farmington
company, asking her, “hi … you look peaceful … by the way did
your daddy tell you he refused to pay us when we stole his company
files?,” adding that “In four days we will be releasing for sale
thousands of patient info. including yours.”

“Nathan Wyatt used his technical skills to prey on Americans’
private data and exploited the sensitive nature of their medical
and financial records for his own personal gain,” said Acting
Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the DOJ’s Criminal
Division.

“Today’s guilty plea and sentence demonstrate the department’s
commitment to ensuring that hackers who seek to profit by illegally
invading the privacy of Americans will be found and held
accountable, no matter where they may be located.”

The Dark Overload has previously been attributed to several
hacking events, including leaking ten unreleased episodes of the
5th season of ‘ Orange
Is The New Black’^[3]
series from Netflix and hacking Gorilla
Glue^[4] , Little
Red Door^[5] cancer service agency,
among others.