14 DAY TRIAL // The Federal Bureau of Investigation decided to offer a monetary reward of $5,000 / €4,000 for any detail that could lead to the capture of John Gordon Baden, one of San Diego’s most wanted cyber fugitives.
Baden is accused of wire fraud, computer hacking and aggravated identity theft, carried out with two co-conspirators, Jason Ray Bailey and Victor Alejandro Fernandez. The identity theft actions are believed to have impacted about 40,000 individuals, whose money was stolen from brokerage or bank accounts.
The crooks spent the illegally obtained funds on electronic items, generating financial losses estimated to millions of dollars, according to a statement from the FBI.
It appears that the illegal activity was conducted from Tijuana, Mexico, by exploiting vulnerabilities available on the computer servers of a US mortgage broker. The trio hacked into the systems of the company and exfiltrated personal customer information available in mortgage applications.
The details included names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses, assets, tax information, and driver’s licenses and belonged to individuals from California and Florida, as well as the states in between.
All criminal activity happened between July 2011 and August 2013, and access to the systems was possible by logging into the systems of the mortgage company without authorization and accessing the application managing the customer records. This would be used for defrauding merchants and financial institutions.
Out of the three criminals, only Baden managed to escape arrest, and he is believed to still be in Tijuana, in the Zona Centro or Zona Norte area.