When a ransomware crew locks up your servers, the outside negotiator you hire has to know everything about you so that they can negotiate a smaller ransom payment. You tell them what your cyber-insurance covers and what your board is willing to pay. You have to. That’s the whole reason you hire one.
But what if your trusted negotiator is a crook?
Angelo Martino, a 41-year-old ransomware negotiator at Chicago-based incident response firm DigitalMint, spent seven months in 2023 handling all of that information. But instead of using it to help minimize damage for his company’s clients, he passed it straight to the BlackCat ransomware gang that was extorting them. In exchange, he got a cut of the criminal proceeds.
He was sentenced on July 3 to 70 months in federal prison for conspiracy to interfere with interstate commerce by extortion.
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