Police in Montenegro’s Interpol office and local police arrested Amir Barati, 40, in June in the coastal town of Kotor. U.S. authorities requested the arrest, according to a report with the Associated Press.
Barati is facing wire and computer fraud charges in the U.S. Southern District of New York, where he and 16 other Iranian nationals ended up charged in a superseding indictment in August.
Barati and his co-defendants stand accused of participating in a yearslong campaign that began in 2013 to steal data from universities and companies around the world, breaching about 8,000 email accounts belonging to professors in the US, Europe and elsewhere.
The academic data and intellectual property the hackers targeted cost the U.S. universities about $3.4 billion to “procure and access,” according to the indictment.
Police said Barati conducted these attacks while working with an Iran-based entity.
Barati helped track the progress of the hacks of universities and helped create “targeting lists” for the private sector, according to U.S. court documents. Among the breached private US companies were 11 tech firms and two defense contractors, according to the Justice Department.
Other members of the conspiracy aside from Barati hacked the Department of Labor, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the United Nations, officials said.
Data stolen in the attacks and access to compromised university accounts ended up used to benefit Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian organizations, including universities.
His arrest and extradition resulted from the exchange of operational and intelligence information between Montenegrin and U.S. law enforcement agencies, police said.