The Iranian citizen pleaded guilty to the US for his participation in the international ransomware and extortion related to Robbinhood’s buyout.
Sina Ghaaf (aka Ghaaf), 37, and its co-authors are said to have violated computer networks of different organizations in the US and encrypted files from Robbinhood Ransomware to require bitcoin payments.
Holinejad, who was arrested in the North Carolina in early January, pleaded guilty in one of the articles for fraud with the computer and abuse and one of the conspiracies to commit wire fraud. He faces maximum sentence of 30 years of imprisonment. It is scheduled for the sentence in August 2025.
“These cyberattacks caused significant violations and tens of millions of losses, including Greenville, North Carolina, and Baltimor, Maryland,” US Department of Justice (DOJ) – Note.
“The Baltimore has lost more than $ 19 million from the damage caused by their computer networks, and as a result of violation of several necessary urban services, including internet services for real estate, water supply, parking quotes and other revenue functions.”
According to the court documents, Gholinejad and others have penetrated and supported unauthorized access to the victims’ computer networks between January 2019 and March 2024, after which the confidential information was copied to virtual private servers under their control and deployed the deformation.
The necessary revenues were washed through the services of mixing cryptocurrencies and moving assets between different types of cryptocurrencies, a technique known as the leash jump. The actors threatened also hid their identity and activity using virtual private networks and servers.
Robbinhood was one of the actors in cybercrime the latch on Bring your own vulnerable driver (byovd) using the legitimate but vulnerable gigabyte -Drivers (gdrv.sys) to redo privileges and disarm the security software.
“Cybercrime is not a victimless offnse-it is a direct attack on our communities, as seen in this case. Governments, and resulted in the losses of tenses of dollars from unsuspecting victims and institutes, “said acting us attorney P. Bubar for the eastern distraction of nort nort karolina.
