This Tuesday, January 9, 2024, the Western District Court of Washington State in the United States sentenced Vosges resident Sébastien Raoult to three years in prison and to repay five million dollars for having hacked company websites and having resold the data on the dark web.
Three years in prison and five million dollars to repay, this is the sentence to which Sébastien Raoult has just been sentenced this Tuesday, January 9 by the Western District Court of Washington State in the United States, for cybercrime according to the court press release. He opted to plead guilty to avoid a possible sentence of 116 years in prison. Sébastien Raoult had been detained in Seattle, Washington State, for almost a year. Sébastien Raoult should see this sentence reduced by time spent in prison in Morocco and Seattle. He should be back in France at the end of 2024 according to his father joined by our colleague Sophie Valsecchi.
In its press release, the court specifies that Sébastien Raoult declared at the bar: “II understand my mistakes and I want to put this behind me. No more piracy. I don’t want to disappoint my family again.”
As a reminder, Sébastien Raoult is a young 23-year-old from Vosges. A former computer science student at Nancy, he was arrested in Rabat, in May 2022, in Morocco, at the request of the FBI. After eight months of detention, he was extradited to the United States.
Accused of having been part of the “ShinyHunters”, a group of computer hackers who stole the data of around sixty companies, between 2020 and 2021, he had always proclaimed his innocence. But to avoid too heavy a sentence, he decided to admit two of the nine charges against him. “My son admits to identity theft and entry into computer systems from abroad”indicated Paul Raoult, his father a few weeks ago to our colleague Sophie Valsecchi.
He faced a sentence of 116 years in prison in the United States. American justice accused him of his alleged involvement in a case notably targeting a Microsoft subsidiary GitHub. According to the American indictment sent to Morocco and consulted by AFP.
According to the press release from the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington, Sébastien Raoult is the man behind the nickname “Sezyo Kaizen”. “Under the “guilty plea” agreement, Raoult and his co-conspirators admit to hacking into the protected computers of commercial entities for the theft of confidential information and customer records, including personally identifiable information and financial information. They have hacked many companies, especially in Washington State, elsewhere in the United States and around the world. After Raoult and his accomplices hacked companies, a group called ShinyHunters published hacked data from several of these companies to sell on dark web forums.
Between April 2020 and July 2021, ShinyHunters recorded sales of hacked data from over 60 companies. Sometimes, ShinyHunters threatened to leak or sell stolen sensitive files if the victim did not pay a ransom. (…) In total, the defendants stole hundreds of millions of customer files and caused losses to the victim companies estimated at more than $6 million.“
The “justice for Sébastien” collective explained on its Facebook page: “In the United States, negotiation is part of the procedure. It is common in 90 to 95% of criminal trials according to the Department of Justice. This practice allows Justice to speed up the procedure while avoiding costly trials. The defendant (guilty or innocent) must choose between accepting the transaction or taking the risk of seeing the sanction confirmed by a popular jury. In this last option, the defendant is often sentenced to maximum penalties. If he accepts the transaction, he goes before a single judge (without a jury).
It was in this context that Sébastien accepted the negotiation and changed his line of defense by pleading guilty. Out of nine charges, only two are retained. The original maximum sentence of 116 years of deprivation of liberty is reduced to 27 years for one of the charges and two years for the other. These are maximum sentences, with the prosecutor asking for only 84 months (seven years and three months).“
The “ShinyHunters” are a group of hackers that appeared in 2020. They are suspected of operating from France. They are accused by American justice of committing numerous hackings around the world. According to the indictment from the American courts, which we were able to consult, three French people, under pseudonyms, including Sébastien Raoult, were spotted by American investigators and questioned.