NEW YORK — Nine Iranian nationals have been charged with conducting a massive cyber theft campaign on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corops, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A grand jury in the Southern District of New York indicted the men for their alleged involvement, charging them with computer intrusion, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The men were involved in a scheme to obtain unauthorized access to computer systems, steal proprietary data from those systems, and sell that stolen data to Iranian customers, including the Iranian government and Iranian universities, the FBI says.
The men indicted are identified as Gholamreza Rafatnejad, Ehsan Mohammadi, Seyed Ali Mirkarimi, Abdollah Karima, Mostafa Sadeghi, Sajjad Tahmasebi, Mohammed Reza Sabahi, Roozbeh Sabahi, and Abuzar Gohari Moqadam.
Each individual was a leader, contractor, associate, hacker for hire, or affiliate of the Mabna Institute, a private government contractor based in the Islamic Republic of Iran that performed this work for the Iranian government, at the behest of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Victims of the scheme included approximately 144 universities in the United States, 176 foreign universities in 21 countries, five federal and state government agencies in the United States, 36 private companies in the United States, 11 foreign private companies, and two international non-governmental organizations.
All nine men are considered international flight risks, according to the FBI.
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact your local FBI office, or the nearest
American Embassy or Consulate.
