ZOHAR Pinhasi, the Florida-based owner of ransomware remediation company MonsterCloud, has been charged by federal prosecutors with wire fraud and conspiracy. The indictment alleges that, behind clients’ backs, Pinhasi paid attackers’ decryption ransoms while presenting the recovery as the firm’s own sophisticated technology, and then charged clients vastly inflated fees for the purported “recovery.” He is reputedly known to operate under multiple aliases, including Zack Silver and Zack Green.
According to the DoJ press release cited in the article, the scheme involved Pinhasi charging clients a fee substantially higher than the ransom he secretly paid. One cited case from August 2023 shows a ransom of about $8,200 paid by MonsterCloud, with the client billed roughly $150,000 for the alleged service. Across the period, prosecutors say he collected more than $19 million from clients while secretly paying out over $8 million in ransom himself, effectively duplicating the harm.
The FBI and CISA guidance on ransomware payments is noted, emphasising that paying does not guarantee data decryption or protection from data leakage. If convicted, Pinhasi faces up to 20 years’ imprisonment on each of the two wire fraud charges and the conspiracy charge.