YNOT – A California hacker’s shakedown scheme, in which he took control of more than 100 computers and used them to extract sexually explicit videos from women and girls, came to an end Tuesday when he was charged with extortion. The federal felony carries a maximum prison sentence of two years.FBI agents arrested Luis Mijangos, 31, at his Santa Ana home. After an appearance in a Los Angeles courtroom, he was released on a $10,000 unsecured appearance bond, although the judge also ordered home confinement and demanded he stay away from computers pending trial.
According to a U.S. attorney’s spokesman, Mijangos will be taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a detainer warrant, because he is an illegal alien.
U.S. attorney’s spokesman Thom Mrozek said the case is unusual because Mijangos did not seek money from his victims.
According to investigators, Mijangos found his victims on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. He seeded the networks with files that contained malicious code embedded along with the popular music P2P users sought. The Trojan horse infected not only the downloader’s computer, but also the computers of instant messenger buddies.
“Once he had control of a computer, Mijangos searched for sexually explicit or intimate images and videos of women, typically young women and girls in various states of undress or engaged in sexual acts with their partners,” according to an official Justice Department statement. Occasionally, he could operate a victim’s webcam directly and record live material. In other cases, he hacked into victims’ email accounts, posed as a boyfriend or husband and solicited explicit material.
If a victim refused to send new material or threatened to alert authorities, Mijangos threatened to forward copies of the videos he already possessed to their computer contacts.
At least 44 of the 230 known victims were minors, according to court documents. Mijangos had been operating the scheme since at least August 2008, targeting primarily Californians, although a few victims live in other states and some as-yet-unidentified women may exist in other countries.
“He preyed upon these young women and girls’ unwillingness to have other people know certain things about their lives,” Mrozek told the Associated Press.
Mijangos told FBI agents he is an independent computer consultant and admitted hacking into the victims’ computers, but said he did so only at the request of husbands or boyfriends who had hired him to determine whether their wives or girlfriends were cheating on them.
A preliminary hearing is set for July 13. Mijangos intends to please “not guilty,” according to his attorney Sylvia Torres-Guillen.
