Florida ransomware expert charged clients $19 million while secretly paying hackers $8 million

Prosecutors allege that Pinhasi secretly paid hackers for decryption keys while charging clients much higher fees. A Florida cybersecurity expert who claimed his company could recover data locked by ransomware without paying hackers has been charged with fraud in the United States. Federal prosecutors allege that Zohar Pinhasi, 50, secretly paid cybercriminals to obtain decryption keys while charging his clients much higher fees. According to the US Department of Justice, his company collected more than $19 million from clients and paid over $8 million in ransom payments.Pinhasi, who also used the names “Zack Silver” and “Zack Green,” owns MonsterCloud LLC, a Florida-based ransomware remediation company. He was arraigned on wire fraud charges in a federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday after a grand jury in the Eastern District of New York indicted him on September 23.The allegations concern businesses that had already suffered ransomware attacks and approached MonsterCloud for help. Ransomware is a type of cyberattack in which criminals encrypt files, making them inaccessible, and demand payment to provide a decryption key. MonsterCloud presented itself as a company that could rec...