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Ehud Tenenbaum, aka, The Analyzer
Photo: Michael Kremer

US: Plea bargain for 'The Analyzer'

Notorious Israeli hacker sentenced to time served, ordered to pay restitution over role in sophisticated computer hacking scheme against US banks

The criminal proceedings against the man known as the 'analyzer' or, by his real name, Ehud Tenenbaum, who managed to hack into the Pentagon's systems, have come to a close last week.

 

According to a report in Wired, Tenenbaum’s case seemed to languish with little activity, until a notice about a new sentencing hearing scheduled for last November appeared in the federal court system, and US District Judge Edward R. Korman formally filed his sentencing order last week.

 

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Tenenbaum was sentenced in New York to time served for a single count of bank-card fraud for his role in a sophisticated computer-hacking scheme that federal officials say scored $10 million from US banks.

 

He was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $503,000 and was given three years probation.

 

The notorious Israeli hacker seemed to disappear after his 2008 arrest in Canada for his alleged involvement in a scheme that stole about $1.5 million from Canadian banks.

 

Notorious at 19

Before Canadian authorities could prosecute him, US officials filed an extradition request to bring him to the States, where he was in the custody of the US Marshals Service for more than a year.

 

It’s not clear how long Tenenbaum was in custody after he was extradited. The US Marshal Service told Threat Level in August 2010 that he’d been released on bond in March of that year, after Tenenbaum had agreed to plead guilty on the access device charge.

 

The sequence of events, the lengthy time that the case remained inactive, and the quiet sentencing suggest that part of the plea agreement may have involved cooperation with authorities, something that is a condition of many plea agreements that involve hacking and bank fraud.

 

All that’s known about Tenenbaum’s case appeared in an extradition affidavit that US prosecutors filed in 2008 with Canadian officials. According to that document, Tenenbaum hacked into two US banks, a credit- and debit-card distribution company and a payment processor, in what they called a global “cash-out” conspiracy.

 

Authorities said the scheme resulted in at least $10 million in losses and were part of a larger international conspiracy to hack financial institutions in the United States and abroad.

 

Tenenbaum made headlines a decade ago under his hacker handle “The Analyzer,” when he was arrested in 1998 at the age of 19, along with several other Israelis and two California teens in one of the first high-profile hacker cases, dubbed Operation Solar Sunrise, that made international news.

 

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 07.08.12, 10:17
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