Connor Riley Moucka was extradited to the United States in July 2025 after he was arrested in Canada. 

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A pair of young men were sentenced to 66 months in jail for committing a cyberattack on the Transport for London that brought the network’s operations to a standstill in 2024, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency said Thursday.

Thalha Jubair and Owen Flowers were arrested at their homes in September 2025, barely a year after the attack, and pleaded guilty last month just as their trials were set to begin. Flowers was previously arrested in connection with the attack in September, but was released after questioning by officers.

Jubair and Flowers were leading members and highly involved in Scattered Spider, a nebulous hacker subset of The Com, according to researchers. The 20-year-old Jubair was a prolific cybercriminal and core member of the unbound collective. 

U.S. authorities last year accused Jubair of direct, prominent involvement in at least 120 cyberattacks, including extortion of 47 U.S.-based organizations and the January 2025 attack on the federal court system. 

Officials said they traced a combined total of at least $89.5 million in cryptocurrency, at the time of payments, to Bitcoin addresses and servers controlled by Jubair. Two financial services firms paid Jubair $25 million and $36.2 million, respectively, in Bitcoin between June and November 2023, according to an unsealed criminal complaint against Jubair. 

At the time of Jubair’s arrest, “he was one of the four principal people that we associated with Scattered Spider,” and one of the two most core players, Adam Meyers, senior vice president of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, told CyberScoop. 

Jubair and Owens had significant resources and support, and “victim payments were reinvested back into the enterprise,” said Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B. 

The lasting impact of Jubair and Owens’ capture and imprisonment remains hazy.

U.K. authorities insist Jubair and Owens’ arrests and punishment “effectively halted the group’s criminal activity,” yet they added that other cybercriminals continue to use the Scattered Spider brand in more recent attacks. 

Thursday’s announcement “represents a significant step in holding accountable two members of Scattered Spider, a group that has repeatedly relied on data extortion, SIM-swap attacks, and other social engineering techniques to infiltrate networks and undermine critical services,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI Cyber Division, said in a statement. 

The FBI also noted, in a LinkedIn post, that members of Scattered Spider “continue to victimize organizations around the world and cause significant financial and operational harm.”

When Owens, now 18, was first arrested for the Transport for London attack in 2024, investigators said he was “in the process of hacking the systems of U.S. health care companies SSM Health Care Corporation and Sutter Health, which had been infiltrated and damaged.”

Officials also said Jubair and Owens failed to cooperate after their arrests. 

“This is the largest cybercrime prosecution ever brought before the U.K. courts and the culmination of nearly two years of painstaking work,” Paul Foster, head of the National Crime Center’s National Cybercrime Unit, said in a statement. 

“Scattered Spider has been the most significant cybercrime threat to the U.K. in recent years. Through this investigation, we have severely disrupted that threat and brought key offenders to justice,” Foster added.

Despite the upbeat reaction from U.K. officials, Nixon said the punishment for Jubair and Owens is “remarkably lenient considering the period of continuous reoffending lasted longer than the sentence.”

Nixon hopes the United States will eventually extradite the pair to face additional charges. “If that happens, they won’t be able to use mental illness as a loophole to get back to harming society as soon as possible,” she added.

“No one who worked on their case was surprised they would reoffend, and there seems to be no allowance in the law to protect the public from what everyone knew was going to happen,” Nixon said. “I know the narrative in the cybercriminal culture will glorify them, but they wouldn’t if they knew the full story.”

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An Armenian national who was extradited from Ukraine to the United States last year pleaded guilty to participating in a series of attacks in 2019 and 2020 involving Ryuk ransomware, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Karen Serobovich Vardanyan pleaded guilty to computer fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud and extortion. He agreed to pay nearly $1.2 million million in restitution and faces up to 15 years in jail.

The 34-year-old admitted to participating in cybercrime from November 2019 to April 2020 when he and his co-conspirators deployed Ryuk ransomware against three U.S.-based organizations while living in Ukraine and Russia.

Vardanyan’s victims include a Michigan-based company that paid a ransom of nearly $1.2 million in January 2020, a Watsonville, Oregon-based technology company that was attacked in December 2019 and a Texas-based school breached in February 2020.

Prosecutors previously accused Vardanyan and his co-conspirators — Ukrainian nationals Oleg Nikolayevich Lyulyava and Andrii Leonydovich Prykhodchenko, and Armenian national Levon Georgiyovych Avetisyan — of illegally accessing computer networks to deploy Ryuk ransomware on hundreds of compromised servers and workstations between March 2019 and September 2020.

Ryuk ransomware was prevalent in 2019 and 2020, infecting thousands of victims globally across the private sector, state and local municipalities, local school districts and critical infrastructure, including a wave of attacks on U.S. hospitals.

Victims of Ryuk ransomware attacks include Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, Universal Health Services, Electronic Warfare Associates, a North Carolina water utility and multiple U.S. newspapers.

Ryuk ransomware operators extorted victim companies by demanding ransom payments in Bitcoin in exchange for decryption keys. Justice Department officials said Vardanyan and his co-conspirators received about 1,160 bitcoins — valued at more than $15 million at the time — in ransom payments from victim companies.

Vardanyan, as part of his guilty plea, also acknowledged that his conviction will have immigration consequences resulting in removal from the United States after serving his sentence. 

The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon has yet to schedule his sentencing.

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A former ransomware negotiator for DigitalMint was sentenced to 70 months in jail for deceiving his employer’s clients and conspiring with ransomware affiliates to extort a combined $75.3 million from five U.S. companies he was entrusted to aid during their moments of extreme crisis, the Justice Department said Thursday. 

Angelo John Martino III shared confidential information he gained from his work as a ransomware negotiator, including victim organizations’ negotiating positions and insurance policy limits, to extract the maximum payment for himself and other BlackCat affiliates he colluded with in backchannels.

Five of Martino’s victims hired DigitalMint, which assigned the 41-year-old to conduct ransomware negotiations on their clients’ behalf — a rare position he exploited to play both sides, effectively conducting ransomware negotiations with himself and his co-conspirators.

The five victims, all of which paid a ransom between April 2023 and September 2023, include a nonprofit that paid a nearly $26.8 million ransom, a financial services company that paid nearly $25.7 million, and a hospitality company that paid almost $16.5 million. 

DigitalMint hired the South Florida-based man in 2022 after he was already engaging in criminal activity, according to court records. The husband and father of two young children had a long history as a cybersecurity professional, dating back to at least 2015, with previous stints at Booz Allen Hamilton, Tracepoint and TRM Labs.

Martino surrendered to U.S. Marshals in March, was released on a $500,000 bond, and pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to obstruct, delay or affect commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce by extortion. He faced up to 20 years in prison.

Martino also admitted to conspiring with Kevin Tyler Martin, another former ransomware negotiator at DigitalMint, and Ryan Clifford Goldberg, a former manager of incident response at Sygnia, to deploy BlackCat ransomware, also known as ALPHV, against five additional U.S. companies between April and November 2023. 

Goldberg, Martin and Martino split proceeds from a nearly $1.3 million ransom payment they received from a medical company in May 2023, but did not successfully extort a financial payment from the other four victims.

Goldberg and Martin pleaded guilty in December to participating in a series of ransomware attacks and were each sentenced in April to four years in prison. 

DigitalMint insists it had no knowledge of Martino’s criminal acts. “The actions of Martino and his co-conspirators were deliberately concealed from DigitalMint and were in clear violation of the company’s values, ethical standards and the law,” a company spokesperson told CyberScoop in a statement.

The company also reiterated that it immediately terminated Martino and suspended his access to systems when the Justice Department notified the company it was investigating him in April 2025.

“DigitalMint maintained controls consistent with industry standards, including background checks and compliance procedures, but Martino intentionally hid his conduct from the company, including through separate, unauthorized communication channels that the government’s filings describe as accessible only to Martino and the BlackCat negotiators and affiliates,” the spokesperson added.

DigitalMint has yet to directly answer questions about whether it refunded its clients who were victimized by Martino. 

“We are not able to discuss specific client relationships or fee arrangements due to confidentiality obligations,” the spokesperson said. “We remain committed to our clients and will continue to maintain strict confidentiality on all commercial matters.”

The case against Martino showcases an extreme, albeit rare, example of the dark underbelly of ransomware negotiation as a practice. The pitfalls of ransomware negotiation are excessive and these backchannel negotiations, which remain largely unscrutinized, can go awry for various reasons.

Officials describe Martino as a ‘double agent’ driven by greed

Prosecutors said Martino obtained an ALPHV affiliate account that he shared with his co-conspirators and received a portion of the ransomware payments for his involvement in the conspiracy.

Authorities have seized $10 million in assets, including a bayfront home with an estimated value of $1.68 million, a second single-family home with an estimated value of $396,000, and cryptocurrency wallets controlled by Martino. Law enforcement also seized multiple vehicles, a food truck and a 29-foot luxury fishing boat that Martino obtained using proceeds from his crimes.

“Angelo Martino’s victims shared heartbreaking accounts of how their businesses were nearly destroyed, while the people they hired to help them instead betrayed them to ransomware gangs,” A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general at the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a statement. “Today’s sentence accounts for the harm Martino caused and demonstrates that the Department of Justice can and will identify and prosecute cybercriminals to the fullest extent of the law.”

Court records include a series of chats Martino held with co-conspirators and victims that exemplify the lengths he went to betray DigitalMint’s clients and empower his accomplices with crucial tips for a successful negotiation strategy.

During an incident response with one of his victims, Martino told a BlackCat affiliate the company’s insurance carrier “was only approving small accounts,” according to his plea agreement. “Keep denying our offers and I will let you know once I find out the max the[y] want to pay,” he added.

“We don’t know how you came up with your demand but we are losing money operationally and all of our loans are going to turnover on us this year at double the interest rates,” Martino said in a negotiation chat visible to DigitalMint and the victim organization in the hospitality industry. “We are able to give you $1 million now, which is a very serious offer.”

Following Martino’s instructions, the BlackCat accomplice responded: “Well, you can keep that for the penalties and lawsuits which are coming your way in case we expose you. Time is ticking — we know how much you can pay. Contact your insurance. We know about them also. Stop wasting time.”

That victim company ultimately paid a ransom worth nearly $16.5 million at the time to receive a decryptor and the BlackCat affiliate’s commitment to not publish stolen data. Two other victims Martino represented via DigitalMint at the time paid $6.1 million and $213,000 ransoms for similar commitments.

“Angelo Martino sold out the very victims he was hired to represent, handing their confidential negotiating positions to BlackCat actors to drive up ransoms and enrich himself,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said in a statement.

In a sentencing memo, federal prosecutors described Martino as a “double agent working to maximize the harm to his clients and the financial gain to cybercriminals who paid him a part of the ransom.”

Prosecutors added: “This was not a crime of opportunity or momentary weakness; it was a sustained abuse of a fiduciary-like relationship driven by a single purpose: greed.”

ALPHV/BlackCat, which first appeared in late 2021, was a notorious ransomware variant linked to a series of attacks on critical infrastructure providers. The Justice Department disrupted BlackCat in December 2023, seized sites operated by some of its affiliates, and said the FBI developed a decryption tool that helped hundreds of victims restore their systems and save about $99 million in ransom payments at the time. 

Martino is scheduled to return to court Sept. 17 to determine the amount of restitution ordered against him for his crimes.

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A longtime former member of Conti, a ransomware group that attacked more than 1,000 organizations globally before it disbanded in 2022, pleaded guilty to participating in some of those attacks in federal court Wednesday, the Justice Department said.

Oleksii Oleksiyovych Lytvynenko, also known as Alexsey Alexseevich Litvinenko, admitted he joined the prolific cybercrime group in September 2021 and held data on 12 victims, including eight based in the United States. The 44-year-old told the court he developed malware that Conti used in some of its attacks, according to officials. 

“The defendant and his conspirators used the Conti ransomware to terrorize people and businesses in the United States and around the world, causing millions of dollars in damage,” A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in a statement.

Lytvynenko and his co-conspirators used the ransomware to attack more than 1,000 victims globally, ensnaring victims in 47 states, Washington, Puerto Rico and about 31 countries, according to the Justice Department. The FBI estimates Conti extorted more than $150 million in ransom payments from victims.

The Ukrainian national pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and faces up to 20 years in prison upon sentencing, which is scheduled for Sept. 10. 

Lytvynenko was arrested in Ireland in July 2023, extradited to the United States in October 2025, and remains in federal custody in Tennessee where at least three of his victims are based. He left Ukraine in 2022 and obtained temporary protective status in Ireland, residing in Cork at the time of his arrest. 

Prosecutors said Lytvynenko and his co-conspirators extorted about $634,000 in Bitcoin from two victims in Tennessee, including an undisclosed government entity that resulted in the compromise of a sheriff’s department, local emergency medical services and a local police department. According to an indictment that was unsealed last fall, Lytvynenko and his co-conspirators also leaked data they stole from another Tennessee-based victim after it refused to pay a $3 million ransom demand.

Four of Lytvynenko’s alleged co-conspirators — Maksim Galochkin, Maksim Rudenskiy, Mikhail Mikhailovich Tsarev and Andrey Yuryevich Zhuykov — were indicted in 2023 in the same federal court for crimes related to their suspected involvement in Conti attacks from 2020 to 2022. 

Authorities said Lytvynenko engaged in cybercrime after Conti disbanded and its members splintered off into new groups, adding that he “was asleep but within arms’ reach of an open laptop running Cobalt Strike” at the time of his arrest.

At one point, Conti was among the most prolific ransomware groups globally, impacting hundreds of critical infrastructure providers, Costa Rica’s government in 2022, and ultimately leading the State Department to offer a $10 million reward for information related to Conti’s leaders. The group was notoriously resilient, bouncing back with new infrastructure and hitting new targets after a massive leak exposed chats between the group’s members in 2022.

Conti disbanded later that year, but members of the Cyrillic-language group rebranded under three subgroups: Zeon, Black Basta and Quantum, which quickly rebranded to Royal, before rebranding again to BlackSuit in 2024.

“Lytvynenko’s guilty plea is a significant step toward holding cyber criminals accountable for the damage they inflict on victims worldwide,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, said in a statement “Lytvynenko profited from fear and coercion, conspiring to use Conti ransomware to extort victims and steal their data.”

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Two former cybersecurity professionals who moonlighted as cybercriminals, committing a series of ransomware attacks in 2023, were each sentenced to four years in prison, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Ryan Clifford Goldberg and Kevin Tyler Martin previously pleaded guilty to one of three charges brought against them in December and faced up to 20 years behind bars. 

Goldberg, who was a manager of incident response at Sygnia, and Martin, a ransomware negotiator at DigitalMint at the time, collaborated with Angelo John Martino III to attack victim computers and networks and use ALPHV, also known as BlackCat, ransomware to extort payments.

“These defendants exploited specialized cybersecurity knowledge not to protect victims, but to extort them,” Jason A. Reding Quiñones, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “They used ransomware to lock down critical systems, steal sensitive data, and pressure American businesses into paying to regain access to their own information.”

Victims impacted by the attacks Goldberg and Martin participated in over a six-month period in 2023 included a medical company based in Florida, a pharmaceutical company based in Maryland, a California doctor’s office, an engineering company based in California and a drone manufacturer in Virginia. 

“They harmed important firms who were providing medical and engineering services. They played hardball with them, going so far as to cause the leak of patient data from a doctor’s office victim,” A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in a statement.

“These were supposed to be cybersecurity specialists who did good and helped businesses and people. Instead, they used their high-level cyber skills to feed their greed. Ransomware attackers like this should be punished and removed from society to serve their lawful sentences so they cannot harm others,” Duva added.

Goldberg and Martin received identical sentences for their crimes, despite significant differences surrounding their initial arrests. Martin was arrested without incident in October and freed on bond later that month.

Goldberg fled the country in June, 10 days after he was interviewed by the FBI. He was arrested Sept. 22 and ordered to remain in custody pending trial due to flight risk. 

Goldberg and his wife boarded a one-way flight to Paris from Atlanta on June 27 and remained in Europe until Sept. 21. When Goldberg flew directly from Amsterdam to Mexico City, he was arrested upon landing and deported to the United States.

“When Goldberg sought to flee abroad and escape prosecution, the FBI tracked him through 10 countries, demonstrating the lengths we will go to hold cyber criminals accountable and protect victims,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said in a statement.

The cases against Golberg, Martin and their co-conspirator Martino showcase an extreme, albeit rare, example of the dark underbelly of ransomware negotiation as a practice. The pitfalls of ransomware negotiation are excessive and these backchannel negotiations, which remain largely unscrutinized, can go awry for various reasons.

Goldberg, 40, and Martin, 36, extorted a $1.3 million ransom payment from the medical company with Martino in May 2023, but did not receive ransom payments from their other victims.

Martino’s ransomware scheme went much further and caused significantly more damage, helping accomplices extort a combined $75.3 million in ransom payments. Five of Martino’s victims hired DigitalMint, which assigned the 41-year-old to conduct ransomware negotiations on their clients’ behalf — a rare position he exploited to play both sides.

He pleaded guilty earlier this month to sharing confidential information about victim organizations’ internal negotiating positions and insurance policy limits he gained from his work as a ransomware negotiator to extract the maximum ransom payment for himself and other BlackCat affiliates.

The five U.S.-based victims that hired DigitalMint and unwittingly tapped Martino to allegedly conduct ransomware negotiations with himself and his co-conspirators include a nonprofit and companies in the hospitality, financial services, retail and medical industries. All five of those victims paid a ransom.

Martino surrendered in March to the U.S. Marshals in Miami and was released on a $500,000 bond. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison and is scheduled for sentencing July 9.

Sygnia and DigitalMint are not accused of any knowledge or involvement in the crimes, and both previously said they fired their former employees once federal authorities alerted the companies to their alleged crimes. 

ALPHV/BlackCat was a notorious ransomware and extortion group linked to a series of attacks on critical infrastructure providers. The ransomware variant first appeared in late 2021, and was later used in dozens of attacks on organizations in the health care sector.

The group behind the ransomware strain also claimed responsibility for the February 2024 attack on UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Change Healthcare, which paid a $22 million ransom and became the largest health care data breach on record, compromising data on about 190 million people.

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