Crime Watch

FBI confirms computer-hacking raid at Merrick home

Posted

FBI agents raided a house on Carley Court in Merrick on the morning of July 19. Special agent Jim Margolin of the FBI’s New York field office confirmed that the raid was part of a nationwide computer-hacking investigation. While evidence was seized from the house, no arrests were made, he said.

FBI agents executed more than 35 search warrants throughout the United States in relation to cyber attacks against major companies and corporations. Fourteen individuals were arrested in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio. No arrests were made in New York.

According to the FBI, the individuals arrested are part of a computer-hacking group called “Anonymous.” In December, the group allegedly executed a “denial-of-service” attack against PayPal, an online business site that allows payments and money transfers to be made over the Internet.

In a denial-of-service attack, a website is flooded with emails so that the system becomes overwhelmed, thereby denying service to users. The defendants allegedly conspired with others to damage protected computers at PayPal from Dec. 6 to Dec. 10, 2010, officials said.

A FBI press release stated that the group, which is sympathetic to WikiLeaks, an international organization that publishes classified government documents, attacked PayPal as retribution after the site suspended WikiLeaks’ accounts so that so it could no longer receive donations via PayPal.

Margolin could not say how the Merrick home was involved in the hacking investigation, but said, “If we do a search pursuant to a search warrant, evidence has been presented to the satisfaction of a judge that there is probable cause to believe there is evidence at that location."

A similar raid, also related to the computer-hacking investigation, was made at a Baldwin home on Tuesday, with no arrests made. Margolin said that although no arrests have yet been made at the two Long Island homes, it does not mean that arrests will not be coming. "We often do searches without making an arrest,” he said. “And then the evidence gathered in the search may subsequently be used as probable cause to make an arrest."

Page 1 / 2