Canadian man gets over 11 years in US jail for global cybercrime

Washington, September 9

A Canadian man was sentenced to 140 months in federal prison on Wednesday for conspiring to launder tens of millions of dollars stolen in various wire and bank fraud schemes, including a massive online banking theft by North Korean cyber criminals and a bank headquartered in India.

Ghaleb Alaumary, 36, of Mississauga, Ontario, who is a dual Canadian and US citizen, was sentenced after pleading guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit money laundering in two cases, one of which was filed in Los Angeles.

As part of his sentence that covers both cases, Alaumary was ordered to pay more than USD 30 million in restitution to victims, the Department of Justice said.

According to court documents, Alaumary and his coconspirators used business email compromise schemes, ATM cash-outs, and bank cyber-heists to steal money from victims and then launder the money through bank accounts and digital currency.

In the Los Angeles case, Alaumary recruited and organized individuals to withdraw stolen cash from ATMs; he provided bank accounts that received funds from bank cyber-heists and fraud schemes. Once the ill-gotten funds were in accounts he controlled, Alaumary further laundered the funds through wire transfers, cash withdrawals, and by exchanging the funds for cryptocurrency, federal prosecutors alleged.

“The funds included those from North Korean-perpetrated crimes, including the 2019 cyber-heist of a Maltese bank and the 2018 ATM cash-out theft from BankIslami in Pakistan. Other victims of Alaumary’s crimes included a bank headquartered in India, as well as companies in the US and UK, individuals in the US, and a professional soccer club in the United Kingdom,” the Department of Justice said. PTI