A member of the notorious hacking group The Dark Overlord (TDO) has pleaded guilty to extorting dozens of companies around the world.
Nathan Francis Wyatt, 39, a UK national, was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay $1,467,048 in restitution to the victims.
According to court documents, Wyatt had been a member of The Dark Overlord group since 2016. The group hacked into large companies, stealing their sensitive data and then demanding ransom.
If victims did not pay, the attackers would sell their data on hacking forums, leak it online, or inform journalists about the breach in order to create a negative reputation for the compromised company.
Wyatt's role in the scheme was to contact victims and demand ransom payments. His connection to the group was discovered after he used phone numbers registered in name to contact some of the victims.
Wyatt was arrested in 2017 in the United Kingdom and extradited to the US in December 2019 to stand trial.
Before his arrest on charges related to the TDO group, Wyatt had been investigated for hacking the iCloud of Pippa Middleton, sister of the Duchess of Cambridge.
Most of the other members of The Dark Overlord group remain at large.
In May 2018, Serbian authorities arrested a 39-year-old man in Belgrade on charges of being a member of TDO. However, it is unclear how he was connected to the group, as authorities only shared the man's initials (SS) and year of birth (1980), making it more difficult to track his case.
The Dark Overlord group has a long and extensive history of hacking. The group has been linked to the following breaches:
- Hacked three healthcare organizations and sold 651,894 patient records on the Dark Web
- Sold over 9.3 million patient records from an anonymous health insurance provider
- He hacked and blackmailed the services of the Eastern and Central Indiana Cancer Center
- Netflix hacked and leaked episodes from season 5 of “Orange Is The New Black”
- ABC hacked and leaked episodes of the TV show “Steve Harvey's Funderdome”
- Hacked Larson Studios, Inc., a Hollywood sound production studio , and stole a large collection of unreleased television show episodes
- He violated HE Parts International Morgan
- Hack Line 204
- Violated Austin Manual Therapy Associates
- Violated SMART (“Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Therapy”)
- He violated Hand Rehabilitation Specialists
- Hack Gorilla Glue
- It breached and leaked data from multiple companies, including Pre-Con Products, GS Polymers, PcWorks, International Textiles & Apparel, and UniQoptic
- He breached Caribbean Island Properties, a real estate company
- He breached Prime Staff Inc., an HR company
- It breached Channel Ship Services, a shipping company
- It breached Sterling National Financial Group, an insurance company
