Security News > 2024 > June > Two men guilty of breaching law enforcement portal in blackmail scheme
Two men have pleaded guilty to hacking into a federal law enforcement database to steal personal information of those they were extorting.
The two men, Sagar Steven Singh and Nicholas Ceraolo are members of a hacking group called "ViLE," which accessed the sensitive personal information from the portal and then used it to blackmail the victims, threatening to publish the sensitive data unless they were paid.
Singh (20, also known as "Convict", "Anon", and "Ominous", and Ceraolo, also known as "Weep", were charged in March 2023 and now admitted to their criminal conduct for which they face imprisonment sentences ranging from two to seven years.
The Department of Justice says the two men used a police officer's stolen account credentials to access a restricted federal law enforcement database containing sensitive records about suspects, enforcement actions, and intelligence reports.
Next, the two doxed and delivered threats to targeted people, threatening to release personal information such as social security numbers, addresses, and email addresses on a publicly accessible website unless their financial demands were met.
As internal communications retrieved and analyzed by law enforcement investigators show, Ceraolo and Singh fully understood the nature and gravity of their activities and feared police raids.