Breach, Data Security, Threat Management

Georgia man sentenced to prison for hacking iClouds of athletes and musicians

A Georgia man who used various phishing and social engineering attacks to break into the iCloud accounts of professional athletes and musicians was sentenced to three years in prison.

Kwamaine Jerell Ford, 27, hacked into more than 100 Apple accounts belonging to high-profile individuals and spent nearly $325,000 using stolen financial information from several of the victims, according to a July 18 press release.

Beginning in March 2015, Ford targeted his victims by sending messages purporting to be from Apple customer support, seeking personal information and in some cases by calling his victims posing as an Apple customer support representative. 

Once Ford gained access to the accounts he reset the passwords locking out his victims and found their credit card information to spent their money on flights, car travel, hotels, retail purchases, restaurants and cash transfers to his online financial accounts.

Ford was convicted of computer fraud and aggravated identity theft charges on March 28, 2019, and, in addition to serving a prison term, was ordered to pay $697,270. 


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