Arrests in Fla., Israel tied to JPMorgan hack

U.S. authorities arrested four people in Israel and Florida Tuesday, some of whom are believed to be tied to computer hacks of JPMorgan Chase and other financial institutions.

Tuesday’s spate of seemingly unrelated arrests weren't publicly tied to JPMorgan's 2014 computer breach, which compromised tens of million accounts. But a federal law enforcement official told USA TODAY that some of the suspects in the schemes, outlined in court papers Tuesday, are also suspects in the hack.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the suspects — rounded up over an alleged pump-and-dump scheme and an alllegedly illegal bitcoin operation — initially surfaced in the government’s investigation of last year's bank breach.

In all, Department of Justice officials Tuesday arrested four men across Florida and Israel and charged five through one indictment and two criminal complaints. A spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office, which issued both the two bitcoin complaints and the pump-and-dump indictment, declined to comment.

The FBI arrested Anthony R. Murgio and Yuri Lebedev at their homes in Florida for allegedly running an unlicensed bitcoin exchange called Coin.mx, the agency announced Tuesday. The two men, through Coin.mx, gave bitcoins to victims of so-called "ransonware" attacks, or attacks carried out with the intention of procuring a ransom, typically in bitcoins, the indictment alleged.

Separately, three men — Gery Shalon, Joshua Samuel Aaron and Ziv Orenstein — were indicted over an alleged pump-and-dump scheme.

Israel police arrested Shalon and Orenstein Tuesday and the Manhattan US Attorney's office said it will seek their extradition to stand trial in the U.S. Aaron remains at large, officials said.

A second law enforcement official confirmed that Tuesday's arrests have some connection to the JP Morgan computer breach, without specifying how. Neither of the two officials who were unauthorized to comment publicly would identify which of the men are believed to have played a role in the computer hacking.

The three men involved in the alleged pump-and-dump were accused of having "orchestrated a multi-million stock manipulation" also known as a pump-and-dump, by manipulating shares in several publicly traded stocks through "deceptive email campaigns and manipulative, prearranged stock trading."

To do this, used bank and brokerage accounts that were opened "using aliases, false and fraudulent passports, and other false identification," the indictment said.

Last summer, JPMorgan said a computer breach compromised information from 76 million households and 7 million small businesses, including names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail address. Internal JPMorgan Chase information about the users, was also compromised, but no customer money was stolen, the bank said at the time.

JPMorgan spokeswoman Patricia Wexler declined to comment on Tuesday's arrests in Florida and Israel.