Guccifer loses extradition case in Romania, to face charges in United States
Guccifer, the famous Romanian hacker has been sent to America by Romanian High Court of Cassation and Justice to face charges related to hacking social media accounts of Bush family and other important people.
Marcel Lehel Laz?r, widely known as Guccifer or Little Fume, is responsible for number of high level security breaches involving both current and former members of US Government. Just after three years after his debut on the world hacking stage, he is being sent to USA for prosecution of numerous illegal hacking activities.
He is currently undergoing a sentence of four years and after his eighteen months in America, he will be brought back to Romania to complete his existing sentence.
Sentenced in Romania
Guccifer was arrested on January 22, 2014, and was later sentenced to four years in prison for hacking the email and social media accounts of various Romanian politicians and celebrities, and also breaking his parole.
Despite the large number of hacked victims, Romanian law enforcement only brought official charges against Guccifer for hacking the email accounts of George Maior (Romanian Secret Service chief) and Corina Cretu (Romanian member of the European Parliament). For each case, the hacker pleaded guilty and received a prison sentence of three years, but the court decided that he should serve just one of them.
Additionally, Guccifer was previously convicted on February 8, 2012, by the District Court of Bucharest, Sector 3 for another hacking-related charge, for which he received a suspended prison sentence of three years.
Guccifer had one year left to serve on that suspended sentence when he was arrested, so that year got added up to the more recent convictions, rounding up to a total of four years of prison time he has to serve in a Romanian jail.
Guccifer is accused of carrying out leaks of sensitive data and hacking of various eminent person’s accounts
In the US, the hacker will be facing multiple similar hacking charges after he broke into the accounts of various members of the Bush family, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, and numerous celebrities like Nicole Kidman, Leonardo di Caprio, Steve Martin, and many other more. For a complete list of victims, you can check The Smoking Gun website, through which Guccifer was releasing his leaks.
US authorities officially indicted Guccifer in 2014. The hacker is accused of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, unauthorized access to a protected computer, cyberstalking and obstruction of justice.
