Jury convicts Seattle woman in massive Capital One hack

Source: Associated Press

Jury convicts Seattle woman in massive Capital One hack

By GENE JOHNSON
June 17, 2022

SEATTLE (AP) — A federal jury on Friday convicted a former Seattle tech worker of several charges related to a massive hack of Capital One bank and other companies in 2019.

Paige Thompson, 36, a former Amazon software engineer who used the online handle “erratic,” obtained the personal information of more than 100 million people — a data breach that prompted Capital One to reach a tentative $190 million settlement with affected customers. The Treasury Department also fined the company $80 million for failing to protect the data.

Following a seven-day trial, the Seattle jury found her guilty of wire fraud, unauthorized access to a protected computer and damaging a protected computer. The jury acquitted her of other charges, including access device fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Thompson’s attorneys argued that she struggled with mental health issues, never intended to profit from the data she obtained, and said in court papers “there is no credible or direct evidence that a single person’s identity was misused.”

Federal prosecutors said she didn’t just steal the data, but also planted software on servers she unlawfully accessed to steal computing power to mine cryptocurrency.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/paige-thompson-seattle-identity-theft-01032e26b4084f213eb5eec5876b876c