Another Arrest in Wall St. Hack

An American formerly living in Moscow but wanted in the United States in connection with a theft of a huge amount of customer data from JP Morgan Chase and Dow Jones is now under arrest, officials said.

Joshua Aaron, 32, ended up busted Wednesday at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and appeared before a U.S. judge Thursday.

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He stands accused of orchestrating major computer hacking crimes against U.S. financial institutions, brokerage firms and financial news publishers, including the largest theft of customer data from a U.S. financial institution.

Aaron was one of four suspects indicted in November 2015 in the plan that compromised data from millions of customers of JPMorgan Chase and other firms.

The bank said the hack compromised data of 76 million customers and seven million businesses, including their names, email addresses and telephone numbers — the largest theft of data from a U.S. financial institution.

Other firms previously identified as victims included the Dow Jones media group and online brokers ETrade and Scottrade.

Aaron is facing multiple counts of fraud, conspiracy and other charges related to the hack. If found guilty, he faces maximum sentences of between five to 20 years on each count.

Two others arrested in connection to the case are what officials are saying are co-conspirators, Israelis Gery Shalon and Ziv Orenstein, who ended up arrested in Israel in 2015 and whom law enforcement officials extradited to the United States in June.

U.S. prosecutors said their crimes netted “hundreds of millions of dollars” in illegal proceeds.

They stand accused of using the stolen data to send emails in an effort to artificially pump up the prices of certain “penny” stocks — a “pump and dump” operation.

They are also accused of operating an Internet gambling scheme, an unlawful bitcoin exchange and an illicit payment processing operation for shady online pharmaceutical sellers and others.