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handcuffs-arrest

Money launderer who helped North Korean cybercriminals sentenced to more than 11 years

A Canadian man who plead guilty to laundering tens of millions of dollars stolen in bank fraud schemes, including a massive cyberheist carried out by North Korean cybercriminals, was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, the US Department of Justice announced on Wednesday.

Ghaleb Alaumary, a 36-year-old American dual citizen living in Mississauga, Ontario, was also ordered to pay more than $30 million in restitution to victims.

Federal prosecutors in California and Georgia unsealed charges against Alaumary in February, at the same time that charges were announced against three North Korean hackers who were accused of stealing more than $1.3 billion from financial institutions and conducting a series of destructive cyberattacks. According to court documents, Alaumary conspired with a Nigerian national named Ramon Olorunwa Abbas to launder funds that North Korean cybercriminals pilfered from a Maltese bank in February 2019.

Alaumary was considered a "prolific" money launderer in the hacking community, according to the DOJ, and helped hackers engaged in ATM cash-out schemes, cyber-enabled bank heists, business email compromise (BEC) schemes, and other online fraud schemes. Victims included BankIslami in Pakistan, which experienced an ATM cash-out theft in 2018, a professional soccer club in the United Kingdom, a bank headquartered in India, as well as various unnamed companies in the US and U.K.

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Adam Janofsky

Adam Janofsky

is the founding editor-in-chief of The Record from Recorded Future News. He previously was the cybersecurity and privacy reporter for Protocol, and prior to that covered cybersecurity, AI, and other emerging technology for The Wall Street Journal.