Notorious Cyber Criminal Sentenced
A Young notorious hacker and one of Europe’s most wanted criminals has been jailed for blackmailing psychotherapy patients after stealing their personal medical notes. From teenage cyber criminal to one of Europe’s most wanted, Julius Kivimäki's imprisonment brings to an end an 11-year cyber crime career that started when he rose to prominence in a network of teenage hackers.
Julius Kivimäki started with a network of anarchic hacking gangs at the age of just 13 and is now aged 24. He was finally caught after he stole a total of 33,000 therapy patients had their records stolen and thousands were being blackmailed in what is the largest number of victims in a criminal case in Finland.
The stolen database from the Vastaamo psychotherapy centre contained the deepest secrets of a cross-section of society including children. Sensitive conversations on subjects from extra-marital affairs to confessions of crimes were now a bargaining chip.
The impact of the subsequent threatening blackmail emails was immediate. Lawyer Jenni Raiskio, who represents 2,600 of the victims at the trial, said her firm had been contacted by people whose relatives had taken their own lives after the patient records were published online. She led a moment of silence in the court for the victims.
The blackmailer, known only as 'ransom_man' by his sign-off online, demanded victims pay him €200 Euros (£171) within 24 hours otherwise he would publish their information. If they didn't meet that deadline he increased it to €500.
About 20 people paid before the victims realised it was already too late. Their information was already published the day before when ransom_man accidentally leaked the entire database to a forum on the Dark Net.
Zeekill's Criminal Career
Kivimäki, who called himself Zeekill as a teenage hacker, did not become the notorious figure he is by being careful. As a teenager he was engaged hacking, extorting, working alongside hacker teams Lizard Squad and Hack the Planet he boasted of his exploits in causing chaos during his teenage years in the 2010s.
Kivimäki was responsible for carrying out dozens of high-profile attacks until, aged 17, he was arrested in 2014 and subsequently found guilty of 50,700 hacking offences.
Controversially, he was not jailed and his two-year suspended prison sentence was criticised by many commentators. While Finland has a comparatively lenient sentencing policy for teenagers, the fear was that Kivimäki and his accomplices, mostly other teenagers dispersed around the English-speaking world, would not be deterred.
Indeed, Kivimäki did not allow his first conviction to deter him. After his arrest, and before his sentence, he carried out one of the most audacious attacks of any teenage hacking gang. He and Lizard Squad took control the two largest gaming platforms offline over Christmas. Playstation Network and Xbox Live went down after the services were hit with an unsophisticated but powerful Distributed Denial of Service DDoS attack. Tens of millions of gamers were unable to download games, register new consoles or play with their friends online.
It took Finnish police nearly two years to gather the evidence to issue an Interpol Red Notice for him and he became one of Europe’s most wanted criminals.
But no-one knew where the now 25-year-old was.He was tracked down by mistake last February when police in Paris went to his apartment after getting a false domestic disturbance call. They found Kivimäki had been living with forged identity documents under a fake name.
From there, he was extradited to Finland where he stood trial in one of the most high-profile trials in the country’s history. He was sentenced to six years and three months in prison out of a maximum seven years, but he is likely to serve only half because of time already served and the Finnish justice system.
BBC | Noticiasaominuto | Twitter | Yahoo | The Bradenton Times | Reddit | BBC
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