Early Scattered Spider member pleads guilty to cybercrime spree

Summary

Ahmed Elbadawy, a member of the Scattered Spider cybercrime group, has pleaded guilty to federal charges including wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. The group targeted high-net-worth individuals by stealing credentials through social engineering and then extorting them for virtual currency. Prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of approximately $17.6 million in assets, including virtual currency, luxury vehicles, and jewelry.

Full text

Another core member of the hacker subset of The Com involved in a spree of extortion attacks from at least 2021 to 2023 pleaded guilty to federal charges, according to court records released Tuesday. Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, a 24-year-old from Texas, pleaded guilty exactly one year ago to wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. His guilty plea wasn’t shared publicly until prosecutors filed an order of forfeiture this week seeking proceeds from Elbadawy’s criminal activities. Elbadawy and his co-conspirators — Noah Michael Urban, a Florida man sentenced to 10 years in prison last year, and Tyler Robert Buchanan, a Scottish man who pleaded guilty to multiple cybercrimes in April and awaits sentencing — were part of an aggressive subset of The Com coined Scattered Spider. The financially-motivated crew obtained credentials via social engineering and stole sensitive company data to identify high net worth employees with virtual currency accounts containing millions of dollars, according to an indictment filed against Elbadawy and his co-conspirators in late 2024. Federal authorities filed charges against five individuals with links to the Scattered Spider cybercrime outfit, including Elbadawy, Urban, Buchanan, Evans Onyeaka Osiebo and Joel Martin Evans in 2024. Elbadawy’s victims included large businesses in the entertainment, telecom, technology, business process outsourcing, IT, cloud and virtual currency sectors, officials said. Prosecutors linked Elbadawy and his co-conspirators to at least 12 victim companies in the indictment, including three businesses located in Southern California where he awaits sentencing. Authorities detailed 29 victims who were compromised by Elbadawy and his co-conspirators. The crew stole virtual currency from wallets controlled by many of those victims. The most high-value thefts included virtual currency worth nearly $6.35 million in September 2021, $571,000 in June 2022 and nearly $1.7 million in December 2022. Prosecutors are seeking significant property and asset forfeiture from Elbadawy, including Bitcoin valued at more than $14.19 million, Ethereum valued at more than $3.4 million and nearly $63,000 in cash. Officials also requested the forfeiture of a lifted golf cart, three luxury vehicles, a painting of Muhammad Ali, luxury watches, gold jewelry, a vast collection of designer bags and 150 pairs of shoes. The terms of Elbadawy’s plea agreement haven’t been released. While early leaders of Scattered Spider have been arrested or sentenced for their crimes, others have filled those roles with even more exceptional impact. The Com has grown to thousands of members, typically between 11 and 25 years old, splintered into three primary subsets the FBI describes as Hacker Com, In Real Life Com and Extortion Com. Criminal acts committed by these multiple, interconnected networks include swatting, extortion and sextortion of minors, production and distribution of child sexual abuse material, violent crime and various other cybercrimes. You can read the indictment against Elbadawy and some of his co-conspirators below. Elbadawy-indictment-Oct-2024Download Share Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Copy Link Add to Preferred Sources

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