U.S. Department
of Justice
Countering State-Sponsored and Other Cybercrime
The Office has prioritized investigating and prosecuting cybercrime cases, with an emphasis on combatting state-sponsored hacking campaigns, cryptocurrency schemes, and illegal and dangerous activity on darkweb markets.
- Charges Against Two Iranian Nationals For Cyber-Enabled Disinformation And Threat Campaign Designed To Interfere With The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election: In November 2021, the Office unsealed an indictment charging Musa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian, two Iranian citizens and residents, for their involvement in a cyber-enabled campaign to intimidate and influence American voters, and otherwise undermine voter confidence and sow discord, in connection with the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. As part of this campaign, the conspirators obtained confidential United States voter information from at least one state election website, sent threatening email messages to intimidate voters, created and disseminated a video containing disinformation pertaining to purported but non-existent voting vulnerabilities, attempted to access, without authorization, several states’ voting-related websites, and successfully gained unauthorized access to a U.S. media company’s computer network that, if not for successful Federal Bureau of Investigation and victim company efforts to mitigate, would have provided the conspirators another vehicle for further disseminating false claims after the election.
- Minnesota Man Sentenced To Three Years In Prison For Scheme To Commit Computer Intrusion And To Illegally Stream Content From Four Major Professional Sports Leagues: In March 2023, Joshua Streit was sentenced to three years in prison for conducting intrusions into Major League Baseball (“MLB”) computer systems and illegally streaming copyrighted content from MLB, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, and the National Hockey League on a website that the defendant operated, which offered the illegally streamed content to the public for profit. In addition, at the same time the defendant was illicitly streaming copyrighted content from MLB, the defendant engaged in an attempt to extort approximately $150,000 from MLB via a threat from the defendant to publicize unrelated vulnerabilities in MLB’s internet infrastructure.
- “Incognito Market” Owner Sentenced To 30 Years For Operating One Of The World’s Largest Online Narcotics Marketplaces: In February 2026, Rui-Siang Lin was sentenced to 30 years in prison for operating and owning “Incognito Market,” an online dark web narcotics marketplace that enabled users to buy and sell illegal narcotics anonymously around the world. The marketplace sold more than $100 million of narcotics, including hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamines, and Lin personally profited millions of dollars from the site while operating under aliases including “Pharoah” and “faro.”
- Three Defendants Charged In Hacking Of Fantasy Sports And Betting Website; Two Sentenced And One Pleads Guilty: Joseph Garrison, Kamerin Stokes, and Nathan Austad were charged in connection with a scheme to hack user accounts at a fantasy sports and betting website and sell access to those accounts in order to steal funds from users. Garrison was sentenced in January 2024, Stokes was sentenced in April 2026, and Austad pled guilty in December 2025. The scheme involved a credential stuffing attack that compromised approximately 60,000 accounts and led to the theft of approximately $600,000 from approximately 1,600 victim accounts, including victims in the Southern District of New York.
- 10 Chinese Nationals Charged With Large-Scale Hacking Of U.S. And International Victims On Behalf Of The Chinese Government: In March 2025, the Office unsealed charges against 10 defendants for participating in a years-long hacking scheme carried out through the Chinese company i-Soon. According to the indictment, eight defendants were employees of i-Soon, a company that hacked at the direction of the People’s Republic of China government, and two defendants were Chinese government officials who directed the hacks. The defendants allegedly targeted victims worldwide, including a large religious organization in the United States, critics and dissidents of the PRC government, a state legislative body, U.S. government agencies, news organizations, and foreign ministries in Asia.
- Justice Department Announces Charges Against Four Iranian Nationals For Multi-Year Cyber Campaign Targeting U.S. Companies: In April 2024, the Justice Department announced charges against four Iranian nationals for participating in a coordinated, multi-year hacking campaign targeting more than a dozen American companies and the U.S. Departments of the Treasury and State. The private-sector victims were primarily cleared defense contractors, along with other U.S. companies, and the defendants allegedly used spearphishing and other intrusion techniques to obtain access to victim networks on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
- Former Security Engineer Sentenced To Three Years In Prison For Hacking Two Decentralized Cryptocurrency Exchanges: In April 2024, Shakeeb Ahmed was sentenced to three years in prison for hacking two separate decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges and stealing cryptocurrency worth over $12 million. Ahmed previously pled guilty to computer fraud, and the case marked the first-ever conviction involving the hack of a smart contract.