Threat Management

FBI offers $5K reward for ‘Most Wanted Cyber Fugitive’

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in San Diego is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a Most Wanted Cyber Fugitive, John Gordon Baden.

Baden is wanted for allegedly stealing the identities of 40,000 people and then using their information to siphon funds from their brokerage or bank accounts, which he then used to pay for expensive electronics, according to an FBI press release. He allegedly coordinated with two others, Jason Ray Bailey and Victor Alejandro Fernandez, to gain access to a U.S. mortgage broker's system. The group maintained access to the system for more than two years.

Once inside the broker's system, Baden and his cohorts stole mortgage applications containing customers' personal information, such as names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses, assets, tax information, and driver's license numbers. The men were based in Tijuana, Mexico, where Baden is suspected to still be.

The group carried out the scheme by allegedly sharing login credentials that allowed them to access the broker's records storage application, BlitzDocs. This further allowed them to steal victims' personal information and also defraud merchants and financial institutions.

Bailey and Fernandez were arrested in February and face charges that include conspiracy to commit wire fraud, computer hacking, aggravated identity theft, and wire fraud, among others.

The FBI estimates that millions of dollars were stolen.


[An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the records storage application as "BitzDocs" instead of "BlitzDocs."] 

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