14 DAY TRIAL // US authorities have arrested new suspects in a lingering case that is linked to data breaches at some of the US' biggest financial firms, but also a money laundering scheme that involved a Bitcoin exchange website secretly and illegally operating through a New Jersey credit union.
Legal proceedings started in July 2015, when authorities arrested four suspects in relation to data breaches at twelve international companies, including nine financial institutions, between 2007 and 2014.
Authorities filed official charges against three Israeli citizens in November 2015, accusing them of stealing data from over 100 million users. JPMorgan Chase, Scottrade, The Wall Street Journal, E*Trade Financial Corp, TD Ameritrade, News Corp, and seven other more companies suffered data breaches.
Prosecutors charged a fourth man, Anthony Murgio, 31, of Florida, but at that time, authorities provided no details except an accusation of running illegal Bitcoin exchanges.
Murgio and Lebedev operated the Coin.mx Bitcoin trading website
More details were provided in subsequent charges in March 2016. Murgio and his partner, Yuri Lebedev, were accused of running the Bitcoin exchange portal Coin.mx by disguising Bitcoin-dollar transactions via the Helping Other People Excel (HOPE) Federal Credit Union in Jackson, New Jersey.
The credit union's former president, Trevon Gross, 46, was also charged with taking a bribe to facilitate Murgio's election on the credit union's board of directors.
According to a recent report from the SunSentinel, Michael Murgio, 65, of Florida, Anthony Murgio's father, was also arrested and charged with federal bribery charges, being involved in the incident mentioned above.
Additionally, the prosecution also piled a money laundering charge on top of the previous indictments for Murgio and Lebedev, Coin.mx's operators.
Prosecutors are accusing the two of knowing that their service was used to convert dollars to Bitcoin, which would then be used by victims of ransomware infections to pay ransoms.
US laws say that Murgio and Lebedev should have informed authorities that such actions were happening through their service, instead of remaining silent and indirectly complicit in the crime.
Of course, the technical details of Bitcoin transactions wouldn't have helped US authorities track down ransomware operators anyway, but this was just another opportunity to throw an extra charge on an already bulky criminal case.