#wire-fraud

MonsterCloud owner Zohar Pinhasi was charged in the Eastern District of New York with wire fraud for allegedly billing clients over $19M for 'proprietary' ransomware decryption while secretly paying the attackers over $8M for the keys. The '$11M markup' headline is a derived figure.

Two former US airmen got 111 and 78 months for a BEC and card-fraud scheme that diverted $1.68M and $720K wires. The docket shows conspiracy pleas, overlapping restitution and a pending appeal; 15 victims and $2.4M are not DOJ figures.

A $16M forfeiture filing this week named five convicted Scattered Spider defendants. The court docket shows two of them — reported this month as "still facing charges" — were sentenced months ago, and that Elbadawy's own "October 2025 guilty plea" was, on the public record, a not-guilty plea.

A Conti affiliate who coded a loader and intruded on twelve victims got 48 months in Nashville on 10 September 2026. The judgment credits custody since his July 2023 arrest in Cork, leaving about ten months. Plea agreement and docket analysed.