‘I Was a Weird Kid’: Jailhouse Confessions of a Teen Hacker

Margi Murphy reports that on a September afternoon in 2022, a pixelated thumbnail of a teenager covered in blood appeared in a Telegram group chat, and Noah Urban, then an 18-year-old living in Palm Coast, Florida, watched as the kid begged for a transfer of $200,000 to captors holding guns to his head. Noah instantly recognised the boy as Justin, who had worked for him helping steal cryptocurrency, though he did not know Justin’s full name.

He considered the video might be fake and, crucially, he did not send any money. By 2022, Noah was on the run from the FBI as a member of a cybergang that would become known as Scattered Spider. Read more at Bloomberg.