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Ryan James Roach, 35, has been extradited to the U.S. after being indicted on charges related to the hacking of university supercomputers to mine cryptocurrency.
Roach, who has lived in both Saskatoon and Regina, appeared in federal court in Rochester, N.Y., on Nov. 3. The court told CBC News that the detention hearing did not go ahead because Roach said he wasn’t prepared and asked for a later date. No new date has yet been set.
A federal grand jury indicted Roach and Mathiew James Stubbings, 41, of Ontario, on charges including conspiracy to obtain information from and damage protected computers, obtaining information from a protected computer, and intentional damage to a protected computer. Each carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 US fine.
Roach has pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York.
He was extradited from Canada on Oct. 28. He was arraigned and held, pending the detention hearing.
Extradition proceedings for Stubbings continue in Canada.
The case
According to the indictment, the two men ran the scheme between June 2016 and December 2019. Prosecutors allege they hacked into supercomputers, stole login credentials and mined cryptocurrency for financial gain.
The pair allegedly used virtual private servers in several countries, registered under false names.
“These servers transmitted malware and mining software to victim computers and stored stolen login credentials,” the indictment states.
The U.S wants to extradite a Saskatoon man who is accused of hacking into universities for cryptocurrency mining.
Prosecutors say victims included educational institutions in New York, Tennessee, North Carolina and Massachusetts. They allege the men targeted schools with supercomputers and researched weaknesses in their networks.
“Roach and Stubbings surreptitiously accessed victim computers without authorization, deployed malware to gain control, stole victim login credentials, exfiltrated the data to servers that they controlled, and forcing victim computers to use their processing power to mine cryptocurrency for the financial benefit of the defendants,” the indictment says.
The indictment says the two accused damaged 10 or more protected computers in a one-year period, causing losses of at least $5,000 US.
Sask. extradition ruling
In May, a Saskatchewan Court of King’s Bench judge found that the U.S. attorney’s evidence met Canada’s legal threshold for an extradition.
According to court documents reviewed by CBC, U.S. prosecutors allege Roach conspired with another Canadian man to hack into at least one New York state educational institution in 2017, steal more than 1,900 login credentials, install malware and use the institution’s supercomputer to mine a cryptocurrency called Electroneum.
The breach cost the institution roughly $337,000 US in damages, including the cost of shutting down systems, conducting forensic analysis and rebuilding compromised infrastructure, the documents say.
According to court filings, investigators with the FBI traced what they called a digital trail linking the alleged hack to Roach. The documents say investigators analyzed IP addresses, server logs, email accounts and hosting records.
