Ransomware negotiator pleads guilty to aiding and abetting a ransomware gang

Angelo Martino, a former ransom negotiator, pleaded guilty to helping cybercriminals hijack companies through cyberattacks.

On Monday, the US Department of Justice he announced guilty plea. Martino, who worked at cybersecurity firm DigitalMint, admitted to playing both sides of the conversation on five different occasions. While working to help victims, Martino admitted that he gave confidential information to those who used the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware, giving them information such as the insurance limits of the victims, and their communication methods.

Martino’s goal was to increase the wages of criminals, which he cut, prosecutors said. He is the third ransom negotiator in the past year to face prison for the same attack.

“Angelo Martino’s clients trusted him to respond to ransom threats and help them stop and solve them on behalf of victims,” ​​Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said in a press release. “Instead, he betrayed them and began attacking himself by supporting cyber criminals and harming his victims, his employer, and the cyber incident response industry.”

ALPHV/BlackCat it works as ransomware-as-a-service, meaning that criminals create and store file-locking malware, while contractors who work as collaborators deploy them in cyberattack games and pay a portion of the ransom profits to the developers.

Last year, US prosecutors are accused a DigitalMint employee, Kevin Tyler Martin, and Ryan Clifford Goldberg, a former operations manager at cybersecurity giant Sygnia, for engaging in bullying and helping the rescue team’s hard-working efforts to combat their work.

At the time, authorities said a third person, who was not named, was involved in the scheme. Now we know it was Martino.

Martino pleaded guilty to fraud and has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Authorities say they have already confiscated $10 million in assets from him.

According to the Department of Justice, Martino also agreed to help Goldberg and Martin send ALPHV/BlackCat ransom to several victims within the US for six months in 2023. The three became affiliated with ALPHV/BlackCat during that time, making more than $1.2 million from one person, according to prosecutors.

Reached for comment on Tuesday, an unnamed DigitalMint spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement that the company was unaware of Martino’s actions and fired the two employees after learning of the allegations.

In 2023, the international agreement to comply with the law they hijacked a dark web site of ALPHV/BlackCat, interfering with its operations. At the same time, the authorities also released a decryption tool to help more than 500 victims of ALPHV restore their systems.