Nine people were charged on Tuesday with various offenses related to the hacking of various newswire services to obtain information from unpublished press releases to use to their advantage in share trades.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of New Jersey, said in a statement that the indictments charge the defendants with hacking into the newswires and stealing confidential information about companies traded on the NASDAQ and NYSE, in what is claimed to be the largest scheme of its kind ever prosecuted.

Those charged were not mucking around with some casual hacking to their advantage on the side, standing accused of stealing approximately 150,000 confidential press releases from the servers of the newswire companies.

Using that ill gotten information, they then traded ahead of more than 800 stolen press releases before their public release, generating a figure the New York Times puts at over $100 million.

“The defendants were a well-organized group that allegedly robbed the newswire companies and their clients and cheated the securities markets and the investing public by engaging in an unprecedented hacking and trading scheme,” U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman said.  “The defendants launched a series of sophisticated and relentless cyber attacks against three major newswire companies, stole highly confidential information and used to enrich themselves at the expense of public companies and their shareholders.”

Eastern European connection

Between February 2010 and August 2015, two Ukranian computer hackers are alleged to have gained unauthorized access into the computer networks of the top three newswire services: Marketwire, PR Newswire and Business Wire.

After using what is only described as the use of “a series of sophisticated cyber attacks” to gain access, the hackers then stole press releases about upcoming announcements by public companies concerning earnings, gross margins, revenues, and other confidential and material financial information.

Those hackers then shared the information with traders in the United States, and are even alleged to have gone as far as sharing instructions on how to access and use an overseas server where they shared the stolen releases with the traders, and information on how to access credentials and instructions were shared.

“This is the story of a traditional securities fraud scheme with a twist—one that employed a contemporary approach to a conventional crime,” Assistant Director-in-Charge Rodriguez said. “But just as criminals continue to develop relationships with one another in order to advance their objectives, the law enforcement community has developed a collaborative approach to fighting these types of crimes.”

All nine defendants are facing a slew of charges, including wire fraud conspiracy and substantive wire fraud counts which each charge carrying up to a 20 year prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gain or loss from the offense, while the securities fraud conspiracy count which all nine are charged carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gain or loss from the offense.

Rather than list all counts in full detail, other charges include standard securities fraud (<20 years, $5 million fine,) money laundering (<20 years, $500,00 fine,) computer fraud counts (<5 years, $250,00 fine,) and aggravated identify theft counts with carry a mandatory consecutive term in jail of 24 months.

Suffice as to say if they’re found guilty, they may not be seeing an awful lot of freedom in their old years of life, if any at all.

A date for the next hearing before the court was not scheduled.

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