MonsterCloud Owner Accused of Billing Over $19M While Secretly Paying Ransoms to Decrypt Data

The U.S. Department of Justice charged MonsterCloud owner Zohar Pinhasi with wire fraud and conspiracy for allegedly paying ransomware actors to obtain decryptors while falsely claiming proprietary decryption capabilities and charging clients greatly inflated fees; prosecutors allege he paid over $8M in ransoms and billed clients more than $19M.