Robert Westbrook from the UK has been charged with a multi-million dollar hacking scheme. Robert carried out a scam between January 2019 and May 2020 by gaining unauthorized access to the emails of executives of five publicly listed companies and using the gained information to take relevant positions in the securities market. The police said that using the internal earnings details and other internal news, Robert Westbrook made profits up to $3.75 million.
Robert Westbrook of London was arrested last week and is expected to be extradited to the US to face charges related to securities fraud, wire fraud, and five counts of computer fraud. On at least five occasions, Westbrook gained unauthorized access to Office 365 email accounts belonging to corporate executives employed by certain U.S.-based companies to obtain non-public information, including information about impending earnings announcements,” the DoJ said.
The SEC alleges that Westbrook stole confidential information from five public companies before at least 14 earnings announcements were publicly released and traded on it by resetting the passwords of the executives’ email accounts.
The incident also proves the power of advanced analytic tools used by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Commission’s advanced data analytics, crypto asset tracing, and technology proved competent in identifying and exposing the malicious actor even though they used multiple ways to conceal their identity, including VPN, TOR browser and bitcoin wallets.
