A Vietnamese man was sentenced, on Tuesday, to 13 years in a U.S. prison for stealing and selling the personally identifiable information (PII) of more than 200 million people, an FBI release said.
Hieu Minh Ngo, 25, was convicted last year for hacking into U.S. company databases to steal information then trying to sell it on online marketplaces to other cybercriminals. Ngo made more than $2 million in the venture, even posing as a private investigator to access the database of Experian subsidiary Court Ventures.
The IRS reported $65 million of fraudulent tax returns filed on behalf of 13,673 U.S. citizens whose information was stolen by Ngo. He faced more than 24 years in prison but his sentence was reduced after he cooperated with authorities, resulting in the arrest of more than a dozen of his former clients, according to KrebsonSecurity.
