DOJ: Three Indicted in 'Largest Data Breach in U.S. History'

Vu, 25, and David-Manuel Santos Da Silva, 33, of Montreal. Between February 2009 and June 2012, Nguyen allegedly hacked into at least eight email service providers in the U.S., stealing confidential information, including proprietary marketing data containing more than 1 billion email addresses, DOJ said. With the help of Vu, Nguyen allegedly used the data to send “spam” to tens of millions of email recipients, activity that became the subject of a congressional inquiry in June 2011, DOJ said. Da Silva helped Nguyen and Vu generate revenue from the “spam” and launder the proceeds, Justice said. “The defendants allegedly made millions of dollars by stealing over a billion email addresses from email service providers,” said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell. “The scope of the intrusion is unnerving, in that the hackers didn’t stop after stealing the companies’ proprietary data -- they then hijacked the companies’ own distribution platforms to send out bulk emails and reaped the profits from email traffic directed to specific websites,” said Acting U.S. Attorney John Horn. Vu pled guilty Feb. 5 to conspiracy to commit computer fraud and is scheduled to be sentenced on April 21 before U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten of the Northern District of Georgia, Justice said. Da Silva was arrested based upon a criminal complaint at Ft. Lauderdale International Airport on Feb. 12, and was scheduled to be arraigned Friday in Atlanta before Magistrate Judge Clayton Scofield. Nguyen is a fugitive.