Notorious French Hacker Faces Justice in U.S. for Major Frauds

Sebastien Raoult, 22, a citizen of Epinal, France, was arrested in Morocco in 2022 and extradited to the United States in 2023.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Raoult participated in large-scale computer hackings that caused millions of dollars in damages to organizations and sold hundreds of millions of personal records to other criminal organizations.

“For over two years, Mr. Raoult participated in extensive computer hacking that caused millions of dollars in losses to victim companies and unmeasurable additional losses to hundreds of millions of individuals whose data was sold to other criminals,” said Criminal Chief Sarah Vogel of the Western District of Washington. “Mr. Raoult’s motive was pure greed. He sold hacked data. He stole people’s cryptocurrency. He even sold his hacking tools so that he could profit while other hackers attacked additional victims.”

Raoult was also accused of creating fake websites of legitimate businesses and sending phishing emails to company employees. When they entered their account information on the fake websites, Raoult would use that information to access their internal networks and steal data.

Stolen information is often sold on dark web forums. In some cases, sensitive stolen information is threatened to be released or sold, forcing victims to pay ransom.

Investigations revealed that Raoult and his associates stole hundreds of millions of customer records and caused over $6 million in damages. Raoult was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay over $5 million in restitution for his crimes.