US prosecutors have unveiled charges against three men accused of hacking into a host of major financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase, and stealing the data of millions of people.
In an indictment unsealed today, Gery Shalon, Joshua Samuel Aaron and Ziv Orenstein face 23 charges, including computer hacking, wire fraud and securities fraud.
Between 2012 and this year, the indictment says that the Shalon, working with his co-conspirators, "orchestrated massive computer hacking crimes" against 12 firms.
JPMorgan Chase has confirmed to Bloomberg that it was the victim of what prosecutors call the "largest theft of customer data from a US financial institution in history".
Other victims, according to the Wall Street Journal, include Dow Jones, E*Trade Financial and Scottrade in a series of attacks that saw the personal information of more than 100 million people stolen.
The information was allegedly used for pump-and-dump stock manipulation schemes, with spam emails sent out to the data theft victims pushing penny stocks to drive up prices ahead of sell-offs that made the men tens of millions of dollars in profits.
Shalon is also accused of a host of other scams, including owning a bitcoin exchange in violation of federal anti-money laundering registration and reporting laws and regulations.
Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara says: "Today, we have exposed a cybercriminal enterprise that for years successfully and secretly hacked into the networks of a dozen companies, allegedly stealing personal information of over 100 million people, including over 80 million customers from one financial institution alone.
"The charged crimes showcase a brave new world of hacking for profit. It is no longer hacking merely for a quick payout, but hacking to support a diversified criminal conglomerate. This was hacking as a business model."