MonsterCloud Owner Accused of Billing Over $19M While Secretly Paying Ransoms to Decrypt Data

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged MonsterCloud owner Zohar Pinhasi, a U.S. and Israeli national, with defrauding ransomware victims of more than $19 million. Prosecutors say he secretly paid attackers to obtain decryptors while telling clients he used proprietary tools to recover their data, The Hacker News reports. Pinhasi faces two counts of wire fraud and one count of engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property.