A Florida man was arrested on Thursday after participating in a bribery scheme. The bribery case aimed at supporting an illegal bitcoin exchange operated by his son and owned by an Israeli behind a sequence of hacking attacks on organizations, including JPMorgan Chase & Co.
According to Reuters, Michael Murgio, who serves on a school board in Palm Beach County, was charged in a prosecution filed in federal court in Manhattan. Murgio allegedly participated in a scheme to pay bribes to allow the bitcoin exchange's operators take over a credit union.
With that, the 65-year old Florida resident was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday. He was later discharged after bailing for $250,000 following a hearing in federal court in West Palm Beach.
The indictment also added Murgio as a defendant in the lawsuit against the three other people including his son, Anthony Murgio, who prosecutors claimed operated the unlicensed bitcoin exchange, Coin.mx.
His son was also involved in the bribe scheme. Murgio's lawyer, Stuart Kaplan, stated that he was "confident that he will be fully exonerated from the allegations."
Yahoo! News reported that the prosecutors have unveiled that Coin.mx was owned by Gerry Shalon, which is an Israeli alleged of managing a massive hacking plan with another Israeli, Ziv Orenstein, and an American, Joshua Samuel Aaron.
Prosecutors argued that Shalon, Orenstein, and Aaron operated a criminal enterprise that hacked into a dozen of companies' networks. They have also stolen the personal information of more than 100 million individuals.
The prosecution describes the hack as "the largest theft of customer data from a U.S. financial institution in history." Also, starting in 2013, prosecutors stated that Anthony Murgio operated the Coin.mx while Yuri Lebedev, a co-defendant, oversaw the computer programming for the bitcoin exchange, as claimed by THE HILL.
Moreover, in the case of JP Morgan Chase & Co, prosecutors claimed that records belonging to more than 83 million customers were stolen. While the Murgios are not accused of taking action in the hacking offenses, prosecutors said that they committed crimes with their co-defendants, Florida resident Yuri Lebedev and New Jersey pastor Trevon Gross, related to the unlicensed operation of Coin.mx.
Meanwhile, extradition proceedings in Israel against Shalon and Orenstein remain pending. The American involved in the hacking plan, Joshua Samuel Aaron remains at large and is believed to be in Eastern Europe by the FBI as of November.
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