The Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg has been charged with hacking several Swedish companies and stealing their personal data. He and three others are also accused of attempting to make illegal online money transfers.

The 27-year-old’s charges include aggravated fraud, attempted aggravated fraud, and being an accomplice to attempted aggravated fraud, according to The Local. He is expected to stand trial next month.



Warg and the other defendants allegedly hacked into Nordea Bank to transfer money from various bank accounts. In total, the four men reportedly attempted to transfer just over US$900,000.



According to prosecutor Henrik Olin, only one of the attempts succeeded. In that case, approximately $4,300 was transferred from a Danish Nordea bank account by hacking the mainframe that was located in Sweden.



The men are also accused of hacking into the databases of several Swedish businesses and the government’s federal taxing agency.



“A large amount of data from companies and agencies was taken during the hack, including a large amount of personal data, such as personal identity numbers of people with protected identities,” Olin said in a statement on Tuesday.



Olin told Swedish media that Warg, who is known by his online handle ‘anakata’, was the mastermind behind the hacks.



“I'd say that Svartholm Warg is the main person and brains behind the hacker attack," he said. The attacks are said to have begun in 2010, and continued until April 2012.



According to the indictment, authorities seized a computer and chat transcripts of Svartholm Warg and the other suspects. Olin claims that it is the biggest investigation into a data intrusion ever conducted in the country.



Warg, who was deported back to Sweden from Cambodia last year, is currently serving a jail term for copyright violations related to his involvement in The Pirate Bay – the world’s largest file-sharing site.



Just last week, the site attempted to change its Web domain to Greenland’s ‘.gl’ after allegations that Sweden may soon seize the page’s ‘.se’ extension, but the Greenland domain was quickly blocked. The site is now back online in Sweden.



The website, which was launched in 2003, is one of the most popular destinations for accessing free films and music online. It has previously claimed to have more than 30 million users worldwide.

