22‑year-old French hacker gets three years in U.S. prison for $5M darknet data breach

Raoult was extradited from Morocco to the United States in January 2023 and sentenced by a Seattle court for computer fraud and identity theft. Along with the prison time, the court ordered Raoult to pay a five million dollar fine for the damage he caused these companies.

The hacker admitted his involvement in a criminal conspiracy to commit computer fraud and aggravated identity theft.

I am aware of my mistakes and I want to put this chapter behind me - said the 22-year-old Frenchman as the verdict was being announced, as noted in the press release.

Raoult confessed his involvement in a criminal conspiracy, which led to the prosecutors dropping seven other charges against him. The prosecution, in their press release, condemned the young man "whose motive was mainly greed" and had initially demanded a six-year prison term for him.

Raoult, along with two other French citizens, Gabriel Bildstein and Abdel-Hakim El-Ahmadim, was pursued by American justice. His family and French lawyer attempted to extradite him to France for trial. They even appealed to the UN Human Rights Committee, as reported by the AFP agency.

The three men are accused of forming the hacker group "ShinyHunters". From 2020 onwards, they're alleged to have breached confidential data from over 60 companies, including some in Seattle, and sold it on the Dark Web.

"ShinyHunters occasionally threatened to leak or resell confidential files if the affected company did not pay a ransom," states a press release from the American judicial authorities. "They stole hundreds of thousands of customer files and caused the companies to incur losses estimated at over six million dollars," the release added.