The infamous hacker, popularly known as Segate, Oreon and Predator, has pleaded guilty finally in front of a New York judge.
The 34-year-old Ercan Findikoglu was accused of 18 charges including accessing customer information and PINs from their debit/credit cards and withdrawing cash from ATMs worldwide. He was also accused of targeting prominent US financial firms like JP Morgan Chase, MasterCard, and the American Red Cross, with cyber-attack in 2010.
Findikoglu is a Turkish citizen and is reportedly the leader of an internationally active criminal group. Now that he has pleaded guilty he might be facing around 57.5 years in prison for his crimes, stated the US Attorney’s Office. He was arrested in December 2013 and in 2015, he was extradited to the US.
He stole millions from those ATM machinesThe ATM Conspiracy:
The hacker worked in collaboration with various co-conspirators and between 2010 and 2013 they together attacked ATM machines all across the world and withdrew large sums of cash. In this regard, three attacks were the most prominent ones. The one that occurred between Feb 27 and 28 in 2011 was one of the group’s highlights as they took out $10million by making 15,000 ATM transactions in around 18 different countries.
On 22nd December 2012, the group attempted another massive attack and took out $5million by making 4,500 ATM transactions in 20 countries. However, the biggest chunk of cash was taken away by these hackers in 2013, between February 19 and 20 in which they withdrew $40 million by making 36,000 transactions from ATMs in more than 24 countries.
Good luck Mr. SeaGate!