The third and final JPMorgan Hacker, Joshua Samuel Aaron, who was one of many facing charges relating to the hefty 2014 JPMorgan data breach, was arrested as he arrived at JFK Airport in New York City this week.
Aaron, aka “Mike Shields,” was one of three men indicted in November 2015 for the massive hack and fraud scheme.
The Justice Department had charged Aaron, the alleged mastermind Gery Shalon, and Ziv Orenstein with computer hacking crimes against not just JPMorgan, but also against other financial institutions, brokerage firms and financial news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal.
Shalon and Orenstein were arrested by Israeli authorities in July 2015 and were extradited from Israel in June.
According to a press release from the US Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York, the JPMorgan hack represents the largest theft of customer data from a US financial institution in history (although the 1Billion hack from Yahoo dwarf this in terms of identities).
The Attorney’s Office says that Aaron, Shalon and Orenstein are being charged with quite a long list of charges: these include computer hacking, securities fraud, wire fraud, identification document fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering and market manipulation.
FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said:
Today, Josh Aaron was taken into the custody of the FBI to face charges filed against him more than a year and a half ago for his alleged role orchestrating a massive computer hack into U.S. financial institutions, brokerage firms, and financial news publishers and for his role in a multimillion-dollar stock manipulation scheme.
US Secret Service Special Agent in Charge David E Beach:
The arrest of this alleged transnational cybercriminal illustrates the dedication of the Secret Service and reach of the US Government in the disruption and dismantling of global criminal networks.
The precedent set by this successful United States deportation should serve as a warning to criminals that the Secret Service will relentlessly investigate, detect, and defend the Nation’s financial infrastructure both domestically and internationally.
Although maximum prison sentences are rarely handed out, if the long list of charges stick against 32-year-old Aaron, he’s looking at a minimum mandatory sentence of two years if he’s convicted.