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Tampa man arrested in connection with JPMorgan Chase hack

 
Published July 24, 2015

A Tampa man was one of two people arrested in Florida on Tuesday by federal authorities in suspected connection with the huge 2014 hack of JPMorgan Chase bank.

Anthony R. Murgio, 31, who address was listed as on Spruce Street in Tampa, was booked into the Pinellas County Jail about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

He was charged with conspiring to operate and operating an unlicensed bitcoin exchange business that authorities say laundered cash for criminals.

Yuri Lebedev, 37, of Jacksonville was arrested on the same charges.

Murgio also was charged with money laundering and willful failure to file a suspicious activity report, according to a federal complaint.

According to the New York Times, their arrests, as well as the arrest of two men in Israel, show the hack "may have been more of an attempt to fuel an ongoing pump-and-dump stock scheme rather than an effort to steal financial data from the nation's biggest bank."

In such schemes, investors conspire to artificially inflate the value of a stock and then sell off their own shares at an increased price.

The men arrested have been charged with various fraudulent investment schemes, none in direct connection with the hacking.

The federal complaint says Murgio registered the domain Coin.mx, which he used to host a business that exchanged cash for bitcoins, an anonymous form of Internet-only currency, beginning in late 2013.

Some of the business' clients were cyberattack criminals who blocked victims' computer systems until victims paid a bitcoin ransom, but Murgio did not file a suspicious activity report, prosecutors say. In all, Coin.mx exchanged at least $1.8 million for bitcoins for thousands of users, the complaint says.

The complaint says Murgio used a fake front-company called Collectables Club to hide the scheme, hoping to make the operation look like a members-only group to buy and sell memorabilia. Online, the company's secondary address lists Murgio's Tampa apartment.

Murgio attended Florida State University, where he met Joshua Samuel Aaron, who is wanted on felony charges connected to a penny stock scheme.

Two men in Israel allegedly connected to Aaron's scheme were arrested Tuesday, multiple news outlets reported.

Prosecutors hope those arrested Tuesday will provide information that will lead to federal charges in the JPMorgan case, the New York Times reported. That hacking involved the theft of contact information for about 83 million customers worldwide.

Times news researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.