A Syrian refugee living in Germany helped pass money to extortionist hackers in his home country, he admitted Wednesday in a U.S. court.
Peter Romar, 37, was part of a group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army. He pleaded guilty in Alexandria, Va., federal court to conspiring to receive extortion proceeds and conspiring to unlawfully access computers.
The SEA has been sabotaging computers in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since at least 2011, according to U.S. officials. Romar’s alleged co-conspirators Ahmad Umar Agha and Firas Dardar are still at large, believed to be in Syria. Both are on the FBI’s list of “Most Wanted” cybercriminals.
Dardar was behind the extortion plot, according to prosecutors. He would take over a company’s computer systems and demand a ransom payment to stop causing havoc. If a victim was blocked from sending money through Syria, the funds would be routed through Romar in Germany.
Agha and Dardar are separately accused of attacking U.S. companies and institutions that include Harvard University, The Washington Post, the White House, USA Today, NASA and Microsoft. Using emails designed to look as though they came from a trusted source, the pair would allegedly gain access to websites and social media accounts and deface them with pro-Assad messages.
There’s no evidence that Romar himself profited from the scheme, and court documents show that he refused Dardar’s offer of payment.
“He gained no money for himself,” defense attorney Geremy Kamens said in court Wednesday. “He used his own name; he did not hide anything.”
Kamens said that Romar’s parents and brothers have all been killed in the fighting in his home city of Alleppo. The defense attorney lobbied to have Romar sentenced immediately so that he could return to Germany, where his wife is battling brain cancer.
Judge Claude M. Hilton refused that request, saying the companies victimized had the right to be heard at sentencing. Romar has agreed to pay restitution to those firms.
Federal guidelines in the case call for a sentence of six to 12 months of incarceration, far below what other hackers pursued by Alexandria federal prosecutors have received. For example, a hacker from Kosovo who sent a list of private information about U.S. military and government personnel to the Islamic State was sentenced last week to 20 years in prison. The Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer” was given a four-year sentence earlier this month.
Arrested in March and extradited to the United States in May, Romar has already been imprisoned for about six months.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Rachel Weiner
