A Ukrainian hacker has pleaded guilty to an insider trading scheme that netted $30 million
The scheme ran from 2010 to 2015 and generated over $30 million (£20.8 million) in illegal profits, according to the US Attorney's Office in New Jersey.
So far 32 people have been charged in connection with the global scheme, which involved hacking into three business newswires, stealing up to 150,000 yet-to-be published press releases containing non-public financial information, and using the information to trade on the stock markets.
The hackers broke into the networks of Marketwired L.P. (Marketwired), PR Newswire Association LLC (PRN), and Business Wire. Once inside the networks, the hackers had access to unpublished press releases for hundreds of companies traded on the NASDAQ and NYSE. They took this confidential information and passed it on to traders who capitalised on it for their own financial gain.
Of the 150,000 news releases the hackers gained access to, 800 were used to make trades, according to the BBC.
Iermolovych and other Ukrainian citizens thought to have participated in the hacking passed the information in the press releases to traders in the US before the information was made public. The traders would then trade on that information.
The US Department of Justice explains how the insider trading scheme worked:
The traders illegally traded on Hewlett Packard, Home Depot, Verisign, Caterpillar, and hundreds of others.
Iermolovych pleaded guilty to US District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo on three counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, and aggravated identity theft. He will be sentenced in August and could face up to 20 years in jail.
Ivan Turchynov, 28, Oleksandr Ieremenko, 24, and Pavel Dubovoy, 33, all of Ukraine, were also charged, as were Arkadiy Dubovoy, 51, and Igor Dubovoy, 29, of Alpharetta, Georgia.