A 22-Year-Old Member of a “Hacker Collective” Sentenced to Nearly 8 Years behind Bars
Timothy Dalton Vaughn, A 22-year-old from North Carolina, has been sentenced with almost eight years of jail time for conspiring to make death threats, computer hacking, and possession of child pornography.
The 22-year old is a member of a worldwide hacking group known as the “Apophis Squad.” Vaughn went by several online aliases, including “WantedbyFeds” and “Hacker_R_Us.”
Vaughn has pled guilty to a variety of hacking charges. One of the charges is in relation to bomb threats made to several school districts, some of which were located in Southern California. Vaughn is accused of giving out a list of information for at least 86 school districts. These school districts then received bomb threats that included explosive devices placed under school buses and on athletic fields. The bogus threats also included information about armed students.
Vaughn also pled guilty to a 2018 computer hacking ransom attack. The attack was on a Long Beach motorsports company. The 22-year-old demanded a ransom of a bitcoin payout that amounted to $20,000. If the company did not comply, Vaughn threatened to unleash an attack on the company's website that would deny service to customers.
Additionally, the 22-year-old helped a hacker colleague of his, George Duke-Cohan, make a bogus hijacking threat against a United Airlines flight that was flying from London to San Francisco. George Duke-Cohan, a 19-year-old at the time, was from the UK and already serving a sentence there for his online crimes. Duke-Cohan also faced charges in the US.
According to court records, Vaughn is on the autism spectrum. He was in his early 20s when he committed his crimes online, and his public defender went on to state that Vaughn "had lost himself inside of his computer.” His public defender also shared that his arrest was in the best interest of Vaughn because he was “in the rabbit hole and near the bottom.”
Vaughn was sentenced to 95 months in federal prison by District Judge Otis D. Wright II. His formal charges included one count of conspiracy to convey threats to injure, convey false information concerning the use of an explosive device, and intentionally damage a computer. He was also charged with one count of computer hacking and one count of possession of child pornography. With his child pornography charges, authorities found over 200 images of minors, including one toddler.
On the charge of child pornography, Vaughn was sentenced to 95 months behind bars. He was also sentenced to 60 months for each of his other charges. The judge ruled that Vaughn would be serving his sentences concurrently.
The Rise of Cybercrime and Online Hacking
In 2018, the same year in which Vaughn committed much of his hacking, the U.S. saw the rise of cybercrime. In 2017, cybercrime amounted to just over $21.2 million in losses in the United States. In 2018, the cost of cybercrime rose to $27.4 million. Annually, the cost of cybercrime on a global level is anywhere from $375 billion to $575 billion.
Online hackers range from novice criminals like Vaughn to more experienced cyber hacking rings. A consistent theme with many online hackers is the need to stay digitally anonymous, and with digital currencies, including bitcoin and ether (ethereum), staying anonymous online has never been easier.
In 2019 alone, cybercriminals were able to get their hands on a whopping $4.3 billion in digital currency markets. Bitcoin remains one of the most popular platforms for purchasing and selling illegal weapons, drugs, and other products on the black market. It has also been a primary platform used for extracting money from businesses, including banks and companies, as we saw in Vaughn's attempt to obtain a ransom from the motorsports company.
In 2019, one of the most high-profile online hacking payouts involved North Korea. According to the United Nations, North Korea was able to hack a variety of banks and cryptocurrency exchanges to the tune of $2 billion.
