Arrests in Fla. and Israel may be tied to JPMorgan hack

Suspects held in alleged ‘ pump and dump’

U. S. authorities arrested four people in Israel and Florida on Tuesday, some of whom are believed to be tied to computer hacks of JPMorgan Chase and other financial institutions.

Tuesday’s spate of seemingly unrelated arrests weren’t publicly tied to JPMorgan’s 2014 computer breach, which compromised tens of million accounts. But a federal law enforcement official told USA TODAY that some of the suspects in the schemes, outlined in court papers Tuesday, are also suspects in the hack.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the suspects, involved in a pumpand- dump scheme and an illegal bitcoin operation, initially surfaced in the government’s investigation of last year’s bank breach.

The FBI arrested Anthony R. Murgio and Yuri Lebedev at their homes in Florida and accused them of running an unlicensed bitcoin exchange called Coin. mx, the agency announced Tuesday. The two men, through Coin. mx, were also doing business with people they believed were engaging in criminal activity, including knowingly giving bitcoins to victims of cyberat- tacks done with the intention of procuring a ransom, typically in bitcoins, the indictment alleged.

Separately, three men were indicted over an alleged pump-and-dump scheme, including Gery Shalon, Joshua Samuel Aaron and Ziv Orenstein.

Israel police arrested Shalon and Orenstein on Tuesday, and Manhattan U. S. Attorney’s Preet Bharara’s office said it will seek their extradition to stand trial in the U. S. Aaron remains at large, officials said. A spokesman for Bharara’s office, which issued both the bitcoin complaints and the pump- and- dump indictment, declined to comment.

In all, Department of Justice officials Tuesday arrested four men and charged five through one indictment and two criminal complaints across Florida and Israel. A second law enforcement official confirmed that Tuesday’s arrests have some connection to the JPMorgan computer breach, without specifying how.

Neither of the two officials who were unauthorized to comment publicly would identify which of the men are believed to have played a role in the computer hacking.

The three men involved in the alleged pump- and- dump were accused of manipulating shares in several publicly traded stocks through “deceptive email campaigns and manipulative, prearranged stock trading.”