The Royal Court of Norwich (UK) sentenced Elliot Gunton to 3.5 years in prison for participating in a hacker conspiracy to steal funds from customers of the Coinbase crypto exchange. This is reported by the Norwich Evening News.
The 24-year-old defendant and his accomplices gained access to the data for logging on to the platform of more than 500 users by various methods, including contacting telecommunications companies with "tearful stories" to forward calls.
The attackers redirected the stolen logins to the fake exchange website, thus stealing assets worth over $900,000.
"This was a highly sophisticated crime that required serious planning and technical knowledge," Judge Alice Robinson said.
Gunton pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud outside the UK and money laundering.
The crimes charged against him were committed in 2018-2019. However, the young man was an experienced hacker by that time — at the age of 16, he stole the personal data of customers of the TalkTalk telephone company and sold them for cryptocurrency worth "hundreds of thousands of pounds."
In 2019, he was sentenced to 20 months in prison and ordered to pay £407,359 for hacking celebrity Instagram accounts.
Gunton also faced deportation to the United States, where he was charged with additional charges.
Recall that in July, customers of the bankrupt Mt.Gox exchange massively complained about attempts to hack accounts.