Marquis Hooper, a former U.S. Navy IT supervisor, has acquired a sentence of 5 years and 5 months in jail for illegally acquiring US residents’ personally identifiable info (PII) and promoting it on the darkish internet.
The person was indicted along with his spouse, Natasha Renee Chalk, in February 2021 and pleaded responsible to aggravated id theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in March 2023.
In response to info contained within the indictment, Hooper opened a web based account with an organization sustaining a database containing the PII of thousands and thousands of individuals in August 2018.
The service, which has not been named, is utilized by reliable companies and authorities companies that require lawful entry to run background checks and ensure identities.
Hoopen falsely claimed that the Seventh Fleet, which he served as a chief petty officer till October 2018, required entry to its database to conduct background checks on Navy personnel.
He then gave entry to the account to his spouse, who helped him conduct searches among the many huge pool to find worthwhile PII over the subsequent 2.5 months.
The 2 illegally obtained the delicate private info of 9,000 individuals and subsequently bought the information on the darkish internet in change for Bitcoin funds valued at round $160,000 on the time.
In lots of circumstances, these buying PII from the couple leveraged it to commit crimes resembling doc forgery and financial institution fraud.
“At the very least among the people to whom Hooper and Chalk bought the PII used it to commit additional crimes,” defined the U.S. Division of Justice.
“For instance, one particular person used the PII to create a pretend driver’s license after which tried to withdraw cash from the sufferer’s checking account.”
It wasn’t till December 2018 that the account utilized by Hooper to steal individuals’s private info was because of suspected fraud.
Hooper then engaged an unnamed co-conspirator to regain entry to the database by following an identical process, providing to pay them $2,500 monthly for “renting” him entry to the brand new account. Nonetheless, stricter verification procedures prevented the individual from finishing the duty.
Hooper offered the requested proof by producing a number of false paperwork of a Naval provide officer and a letter supposedly from a commanding officer.
The co-conspirator submitted these to the database firm, however the account was nonetheless declined, probably primarily based on suspected fraud.
Chalk at present faces a most penalty of 20 years in jail and $250,000 in fines and is scheduled to listen to her sentence on November 20, 2023.
