[ISN] Indian pleads guilty in international online brokerage hacking scheme

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/indians-abroad/Indian-pleads-guilty-international-online-brokerage-hacking-scheme/articleshow/5544566.cms

The Times of India
7 February 2010

CHICAGO: An Indian man has pleaded guilty to participating in an international 
fraud scheme to hack online brokerage accounts in the US and use them to 
manipulate stock prices to reap thousands of dollars in illegal profits 
and faces up to 7 years in prison during the April 26 sentencing.

35-year-old Jaisankar Marimuthu, a native of Chennai, pleaded guilty to 
one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, computer 
fraud and aggravated identity theft, and to one count of aggravated 
identity theft before US District Magistrate Judge FA Gossett III in 
Omaha, Nebraska on February 5.

Marimuthu, who was extradited to the US in June 2009 for trial following 
his arrest in Hong Kong, faces up to seven years in prison, a maximum 
fine of USD 500,000 and three years of supervised release following his 
prison term.

Sentencing has been set for April 26 before US District Court Judge 
Laurie Smith Camp.

According to the indictment, Marimuthu was part of a conspiracy operated 
out of Thailand and India between February and December 2006 in which 
the prices of thinly-traded securities were fraudulently inflated by 
hacking into brokerage accounts in the US and then illegally using the 
accounts to make large unauthorised purchases of securities in the name 
of unsuspecting customers.

After the price of the securities had been artificially increased or 
"pumped up" through the bogus trading, Marimuthu admitted that the 
conspirators' own holdings of the securities would be sold at profit. 


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