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Surveillance images of Connor Moucka included in an affidavit filed in court docket.Equipped
Connor Moucka, a Kitchener, Ont., resident accused of collaborating in a large hacking scheme concentrating on prospects of cloud storage supplier Snowflake Inc. SNOW-N, allegedly posted on-line about acquiring firearms and conducting mass killings, in keeping with court docket paperwork.
Mr. Moucka, who U.S. authorities are looking for to extradite, posed a hazard to the general public and himself and was a flight threat, having acquired a considerable sum of cryptocurrency, Canadian and U.S. regulation enforcement officers allege in an unsealed arrest warrant filed in a Kitchener court docket final month.
The 25-year-old allegedly used racial slurs on-line and wrote about killing Black individuals, as an illustration by “mass mailing” them sodium-nitrate tablets; buying “guns to kill Canadians”; and desirous to commit “suicide by cop,” in keeping with court docket paperwork.
On Jan. 11, a username allegedly belonging to Mr. Moucka mused on the web platform Discord that he can be “a good mass shooter,” the paperwork state. The person described a plan to purchase a field van and mount an M134 machine gun inside it, controlling it with a distant management, “then just mow down a crowd.” He may stay hidden the entire time, he wrote.
The paperwork additionally comprise proof reminiscent of chat logs allegedly linking Mr. Moucka to a hacking scheme that started final spring and focused prospects of a U.S. cloud-based storage supplier believed to be Snowflake.
The scheme concerned utilizing stolen login credentials to entry personal knowledge – reminiscent of banking info, medical data, driver’s licence numbers, passport numbers and Social Safety numbers – saved within the cloud and belonging to companies and their customers, then extorting these firms for ransoms by threatening to leak the stolen knowledge on-line.
The U.S. indictment in opposition to Mr. Moucka and his alleged co-conspirator, Turkey resident John Erin Binns, doesn’t identify Snowflake or the opposite sufferer firms, though the cloud storage supplier is broadly believed to be Snowflake as a result of it has publicly acknowledged breaches affecting its prospects.
Mr. Moucka and Mr. Binns are accused of getting hacked into a minimum of 10 firms’ protected laptop networks, having access to billions of delicate buyer data, efficiently extorting a minimum of $2.5-million from a minimum of three firms and posting presents to promote stolen knowledge on cybercriminal boards.
In a single assault, hackers obtained 50 billion phone-call and text-message data belonging to the purchasers of an unnamed U.S. telecom big. The telecom paid the ransom however was extorted once more a number of months later in October, in keeping with court docket paperwork.
U.S. authorities say they’re conscious of greater than 100 different firms which will have fallen sufferer to associated breaches performed by among the similar co-conspirators utilizing related strategies.
Corporations which have publicly introduced breaches linked to Snowflake embody U.S. telecom big AT&T Inc., luxurious retailer Neiman Marcus Group Ltd., Ticketmaster Leisure, Santander Financial institution and extra.
Makes an attempt to achieve Mr. Moucka for remark or determine a lawyer representing him had been unsuccessful. Ontario court docket data checklist him as “unrepresented,” and the Division of Justice Canada beforehand instructed The Globe that Mr. Moucka was awaiting a call from authorized support.
U.S. authorities had been in a position to find Mr. Moucka and join him to felony exercise by way of his Apple iCloud account, they allege.
An arrest warrant for Mr. Moucka was issued in Seattle on Oct. 10 for conspiracy, laptop fraud and abuse, extortion in relation to laptop fraud, wire fraud and aggravated id theft.
The unsealed Ontario court docket data recognized Mr. Moucka’s Kitchener tackle. Photographs on-line present that it’s a small pink brick residence with white siding on a tree-lined road in Kitchener’s Stanley Park neighbourhood.
On Oct. 21, shortly after 2:20 p.m., a plainclothes RCMP officer knocked on Mr. Moucka’s entrance door and rang the bell. The person who answered was dishevelled and recognized himself as Alex. “You woke me up, sir,” Mr. Moucka mentioned, in keeping with an affidavit sworn by Constable Jaclyn Whittington of the RCMP.
Pictures taken that day by the RCMP’s surveillance crew depict a younger man with messy darkish hair and a mustache and beard carrying a striped collared T-shirt standing within the doorway.
A number of days later, on Oct. 29, the Ontario Superior Courtroom issued a warrant for Mr. Moucka’s provisional arrest. He was taken into custody the next day and appeared in court docket later that afternoon, then once more on Nov. 12.
The arrest warrant was initially sealed to be able to forestall Mr. Moucka from changing into conscious of the file’s contents, which authorities feared may trigger him to flee or try and delete or destroy proof.
“Based on lawfully obtained screenshots from Moucka’s iCloud account, Moucka controls a significant amount of cryptocurrency stored in wallets that have not yet been found by law enforcement. These proceeds could be used to facilitate his flight and would support him afterwards,” court docket paperwork state. One checking account or crypto pockets exhibits a steadiness of $3.496-million, in keeping with U.S. regulation enforcement.
In February, Mr. Moucka wrote on-line that he was “pretty sure” he may receive citizenship to the Czech Republic, authorities allege.
Legislation enforcement had been additionally involved that the hazard that Mr. Moucka allegedly poses to the general public, the police and himself can be elevated if he grew to become conscious of the contents of the court docket file. The paperwork had been unsealed after his arrest.
Mr. Moucka, whose full identify is Connor Riley Moucka, goes by a number of aliases, authorities allege, together with “Alexander Antonin Moucka,” “judische,” “catist,” “waifu” and “ellye18.”
A kind of aliases is related to a felony matter in Quebec. In accordance with court docket paperwork obtained by The Globe, a 25-year-old Kitchener resident named Alexander Antonin Moucka was criminally charged in November, 2023, for allegedly harassing a lady “by means of telecommunication” and threatening to kill her or trigger bodily hurt to her. The alleged incidents occurred in Montreal between July 1 and Sept. 30 of that 12 months.
The individual controlling a Discord account linked to the hacks states that he has modified his beginning identify from Connor to Alex, that he lived in Wyoming when he was youthful and that he was raised by his grandparents till he was 11 years outdated, then lived with them once more for a number of years when he was 16, in keeping with the court docket paperwork.
Mr. Moucka is scheduled to seem in court docket once more on Nov. 29.
