21-Year-Old Cypriot Hacker Extradited to U.S. Over Fraud and Extortion Charges
July 20, 2020Swati Khandelwal
The United States Department of Justice has extradited two criminals from the Republic of Cyprus—one is a computer hacker suspected of cyber intrusions and extortion, and the other is a money launderer with known connections to the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Both suspects— Joshua Polloso Epifaniou , 21, a resident of Nicosia, and Ghassan Diab , 37, a citizen of Lebanon—were arrested earlier last year and extradited to the United States last weekend. According to the indictment , Epifaniou conducted a brute force attack against the Phoenix-based online review portal Ripoff Report (ROR) in October 2016 and successfully override ROR's login and password protection to gain access to its database through an existing account associated with a ROR employee. In November 2016, Epifaniou tried to extort the company by emailing ROR's CEO with a hyperlink to a video demonstrating Epifaniou's unauthorized access to the ROR CEO's account, threatening him to publicly di
