Houston Man Indicted by Federal Grand Jury for Cyber Attack on Los Angeles County Superior Court

          LOS ANGELES – A Houston, Texas man was indicted today on multiple felony counts for allegedly staging a phishing attack that used the Los Angeles County Superior Court (LASC) computer system.

          Oriyomi Sadiq Aloba, 32, was named in an 11-count indictment returned this afternoon by a federal grand jury.

          The indictment specifically charges Aloba with five counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information, one count of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, and five counts of aggravated identity theft.

          According to the indictment, over the course of a week in late July 2017, Aloba used the stolen username and passwords of multiple LASC employees to log into LASC servers and send phishing emails. The phishing attack targeted email addresses outside the LASC system, and Aloba also allegedly sent test emails to himself to test the security features and ensure that he had full access to the accounts.

          The phishing emails purported to be a communication from American Express and led victims to a webpage that asked for American Express login credentials, personal identifying information and credit card information. The link for the fake American Express website used a source code that designated Aloba’s account as the delivery address for the information that the victims input into the website.

          Aloba allegedly accessed at least 18 different LASC employee accounts and sent out approximately 2 million phishing emails.

          An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.

          Aloba is scheduled to be arraigned on the indictment on March 8.

          If Aloba were to be found guilty of the charges in the indictment, he would face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years for the unauthorized impairment count, five years for each of the unauthorized access counts, and a mandatory two-year sentence for each the identity theft counts.

          Aloba was initially charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney, but the matter was referred to the United States Attorney’s Office for federal prosecution. Aloba was initially charged in federal court on January 10. He made his initial appearance in the federal case on January 17, at which time he was ordered released on a $10,000 bond.

          This matter is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

          The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Robyn Bacon of the Cyber and Intellectual Property Crimes Section.