Robert Purbeck, a 45-year-old man from Idaho, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for hacking at the very least 19 organizations in america, stealing the non-public knowledge of greater than 132,000 individuals, and a number of extortion makes an attempt.
As showcased within the indictment, prosecutors linked a number of knowledge theft and blackmail incidents to Purbeck (additionally recognized on-line as “Lifelock” and “Studmaster”).
In 2017, he purchased community entry to a pc server of a medical clinic in Georgia on a darknet market. He then leveraged this entry to steal the personally identifiable info (PII) of 43,000 people, together with their names, addresses, and social security numbers.
In February 2018, Purbeck purchased entry to a Georgia-based police division server, which enabled him to steal studies, paperwork, and PII of 14,000 individuals after hacking into the Metropolis of Newnan’s programs.
Months later, in July 2018, the person demanded a ransom from a Florida orthodontist for not leaking his sufferers’ stolen recordsdata. Purbeck continued harassing him and his sufferers for greater than 10 days with many emails and textual content messages, threatening to promote their private and well being knowledge until the ransom was paid.
“Purbeck additionally recognized the names and social security numbers of [his] minor kids and threatened to reveal and promote their private info as properly,” the indictment additional reveals.
Whereas raiding his residence in August 2019, the FBI discovered the information of greater than 132,000 individuals on seized units, probably stolen in a number of data breaches over time.
“On Aug. 21, 2019, the FBI executed a federal search warrant at Purbeck’s residence in Meridian,” the U.S. Justice Division stated in a Wednesday press launch.
“Through the search, the FBI seized a number of computer systems and digital units, which contained private info of over 132,000 people, obtained by means of Purbeck’s quite a few data breaches.”
In March, the person pleaded responsible to 2 counts of deliberately accessing and acquiring info from a protected pc with out authorization and was sentenced to 10 years in jail.
Along with the principle sentence, Purbeck will serve three years of supervised launch and pay his victims over $1,048,700 in restitution.
