Here at the firm of Champerty, Maintenance and Barratry we employ many novel techniques to win cases for those we fund and reward our investors.
From Reuters, June 30:
A trove of thousands of email records uncovered by Reuters reveals Indian cyber mercenaries hacking parties involved in lawsuits around the world – showing how hired spies have become the secret weapon of litigants seeking an edge.
Bodyguard Carlo Pacileo was under mounting pressure. His boss, a direct sales entrepreneur named Ryan Blair, wanted compromising material against a business rival amid a flurry of lawsuits, Pacileo said. Nothing was turning up.
So he turned to a Silicon Valley detective he knew from his days in Afghanistan with the U.S. mercenary firm Blackwater. Nathan Moser, a former North Carolina sheriff’s deputy, arrived days later at Pacileo’s Hollywood apartment with a duffel bag full of surveillance equipment.
Moser showed Pacileo several gadgets, including Israeli-made listening devices that could be hidden in ceilings or behind television sets. One particular service stood out: Moser said he knew an Indian hacker who could break into emails. “My ears perked up,” Pacileo told Reuters recently. “I didn’t know you could do that type of stuff.”
Moser, who confirmed Pacileo’s account, got the job and a $10,000 per month retainer . He went to work for Blair’s company, diet shake distributor ViSalus, as it filed a series of lawsuits against sellers who had jumped ship to go with a competitor named Ocean Avenue.
Starting around February 2013, the Indian hacker – a young computer security expert named Sumit Gupta – broke into the email accounts of Ocean Avenue executives, sending screenshots and passwords back to his ViSalus handlers on the West Coast.
When Ocean Avenue learned of the spying, it filed a federal lawsuit against ViSalus in Utah alleging extortion, intimidation and hacking. ViSalus initially argued that its competitor had not provided enough evidence to back its claims; it later settled the suit on undisclosed terms.
ViSalus executives did not return messages seeking comment. Messages Reuters sent to Blair, who wasn’t named as a defendant in the suit, were marked as “seen” but went unanswered. He did not respond to certified letters sent to his business and home in Los Angeles.
The settlement didn’t end the matter. The Federal Bureau of Investigation learned of the hacking and, in February 2015, agents raided Pacileo’s and Moser’s homes. Both eventually pleaded guilty to computer crimes connected to the Ocean Avenue intrusions.
The convictions torpedoed Pacileo’s security career and ended Moser’s investigation business.
For Gupta it was just the beginning. Over the next decade, he and a small coterie of Indian colleagues built an underground hacking operation that would become a hub for private investigators, like Moser, who sought an advantage for clients embroiled in lawsuits.
Gupta, also charged with hacking in the California criminal case, was never apprehended by U.S. authorities. Reuters has not been able to reach him since 2020, when he told the news agency that while he did work for private investigators, “I have not done all these attacks.” Recent attempts to speak with or locate him were unsuccessful.
Reuters identified 35 legal cases since 2013 in which Indian hackers attempted to obtain documents from one side or another of a courtroom battle by sending them password-stealing emails.
The messages were often camouflaged as innocuous communications from clients, colleagues, friends or family. They were aimed at giving the hackers access to targets’ inboxes and, ultimately, private or attorney-client privileged information....
....MUCH MORE
People are so creative in their nefarious attempts to make an illegal buck or two.
