An English court approved the extradition of an Israeli man on Wednesday accused by the prosecutors in New York of running a “hacking-for-hire” operation aimed at environmental groups.
Prosecutors say that companies that are run by the man, Amit Forlit, 57, earned at least $ 16 million by hacking more than 100 victims and stealing confidential information on behalf of a lobbying company that works for a large oil company.
Lawyers for Mr Forlit identified the company as an ExxonMobil in a court application in January. Exxon has been sued by Democratic Attornneys General and other local officials about its role in climate change. The lawsuits claim that the company knew about climate change for decades to keep selling oil. The lobbying company was identified in the submission as a DCI group.
An Exxon statement said that the company had not been involved and was not aware of hacking. “If hacking was involved, we condemn it in the strongest possible conditions,” said the statement.
A spokesperson for DCI, Craig Stevens, said that the company instructs employees and consultants to meet the law and that no one had directed or involved DCI “in hacking that would have taken place a decade ago.”
DCI also said that “radical anti-oil activists and their billionaire donors, many of whom are still sleeping in beds paid by the fossil-energy legacy trust funds, conspiracy theories about the company about the company.
That was a clear reference to the role of the Rockefeller family in supporting organizations that argue for a lawsuit. Heirs of John D. Rockefeller, who earned his fortune in Oil more than a century ago, lead a foundation today, the Rockefeller Family Fund, that Plays an important role in the movement to sue oil companies About climate change. Lee Wasserman, the director, said that he was the target of the hacking campaign.
Mr. Forlit was arrested in London last year after a large jury attack in New York accusation of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit computer hacking that could wear a long sentence. His lawyers had argued that he would not be extradited because he would not receive a fair trial in the United States because of the political fire storm over Disputes of climate change.
They argued that “one of the reasons underlying the prosecution is to promote the politically motivated cause of the pursuit of ExxonMobil, with Mr Forlit a form of additional damage.”
His lawyers also argued that Mr Forlit would be endangered in the metropolitan detention center, the only federal prison in New York, which has been plagued by violence and dysfunction. Lucri Mangione, Sam Bankman-Fried and Sean Combs, also known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, include high-profile defendants who were held there recently.
The court of Westminster Magistrates has rejected those concerns. Mr. Forlit can appeal against the decision. His lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
One of the targeted groups was the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has long investigated the role of the fossil fuel industry in what climate sciences disinformation calls. The group also does the Source attributage science, the practice of the use of data to estimate the contributions of specific companies to the effects of global warming, such as the rise in sea level or forest fires. The work is cited in lawsuits against the oil industry.
The organization heard about the hacking of a 2020 report from Citizen Lab, a cyber security ware dog group at the University of Toronto, according to Kathy Mulvey of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report thought that Hackers had focused on American non -profit organizations Working on a campaign called #exxonknew, who argued that the company had hidden information about climate change.
Countless Union of Concerned Scientists employees received suspicious e -mails in which hackers tried to mislead them to give passwords or to install malignant software. Public prosecutors at the office of the American lawyers for the southern district of New York started an investigation.
An employee of Mr Forlit, Aviram Azari, pleaded in 2023 guilty in New York of crimes, including computer intrusion, wire fraud and identity theft and was sentenced to six years in prison.
Mr. Forlit led three security and intelligence collection, two registered in Israel and one in the United States, who took people to hack e-mail accounts and devices, according to the submission. His customers include a lobbying company in Washington who on behalf of “one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, centered in Irving, Texas, in connection with the current lawsuits of climate change that is being set against it.” Exxon previously had his head office in Irving.
The lobbying company identified goals to Mr Forlit, after which he or another person gave a list to Mr Azari, who had another company established in Israel and hired people in India to gain illegal access to the accounts, said the submission. Those details were used to obtain documents that were given to the oil company and the media “to undermine the integrity of civilian studies,” said the application.
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