RANSOMWARE NEGOTIATOR SENTENCED TO 70 MONTHS FOR COLLUDING WITH ATTACKERS

Angelo Martino, a negotiator employed to help ransomware victims, was sentenced to 70 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to interfere with interstate commerce through extortion. According to court filings, Martino colluded with the BlackCat ransomware group to extort five victims who had hired his employer, DigitalMint, to negotiate on their behalf. He provided the attackers with confidential details about victims' negotiating strategies and positions in exchange for payment, enabling BlackCat to maximise ransom demands. Law enforcement seized assets worth $10 million obtained through the scheme.

The victims—four companies and one non-profit—paid ransoms totalling over $75 million, with individual payments ranging from $213,000 to $26.8 million. Court documents stated that Martino and two co-conspirators, each previously sentenced to 48 months, also deployed ransomware against the five victims themselves. One victim, a medical device company, paid a $1.2 million ransom. DigitalMint fully cooperated with investigators and stated it had no knowledge of the scheme. Martino had sought a 24-month sentence as part of his plea agreement but received a substantially longer term.

The court ordered Martino to forfeit 10 percent of his post-release earnings to compensate victims. The Department of Justice stated in December that it had disrupted BlackCat, also known as ALPHV, which claimed responsibility for multiple cyberattacks in 2023 including an outage at MGM Resorts. The FBI developed a decryption tool that assisted more than 500 victims in avoiding over $68 million in total payments. The government continues pursuing BlackCat administrators and affiliates, offering a reward of up to $10 million for information.