Four months ago HBO faced a punishing series of leaks of unreleased episodes, scripts, and even celebrities' contact information. On Tuesday the Department of Justice named the alleged culprit behind that extortion campaign: an Iranian hacker named Behzad Mesri. By indicting Mesri, prosecutors have sent a message that even anonymous cybercriminals in countries as distant as Iran can be tracked down and unmasked.

The more muted part of that message: Stay in Iran, and you'll probably never face a US trial.

The Justice Department's indictment charges 39-year-old Mesri, also known as "Skote Vashat" or "Mr. Smith" to his victims, with computer fraud, wire fraud, identity theft, and the rarer charge of using a computer for extortion. The indictment describes how Mesri stole HBO's data—totaling no less than 1.5 terabytes, by his measure—demanded $6 million in bitcoin from HBO, and released a series of damaging data dumps to coerce the company to pay. Those dumps included draft scripts for unaired episodes of Game of Thrones, full, unaired episodes of shows including Ballers, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Deuce, emails, contracts, and even cast and crew contact lists that included actors' personal phone numbers.

"Mersi allegedly organized his hacking scheme from halfway around the world, in Iran," Southern District of New York district attorney Joon Kim told reporters at a Tuesday press conference. "He now stands charged with federal crimes, and although not arrested today, he will forever have to look over his shoulder until he is made to face justice."

FBI

The United States, however, has no extradition treaty with Iran. And even as it announced those charges, the Justice Department seemed to admit that it would likely never actually lay hands on Mesri. "Because Mesri is in Iran we are unfortunately unable to arrest him," Kim said flatly.

The feds could have strategically kept the charges against Mesri sealed until he could be lured out of Iran, detained, and extradited, but apparently viewed that scenario as a long shot. "We made the determination we were not likely to get him," Kim said. "We weighed that against sending a message. That was the balancing we did, and we decided now was the right time to do it."

As one might expect from such an audacious intrusion, Mesri is no ordinary criminal hacker. According to the indictment, he worked at times on the behalf of the Iranian military to hack other countries' military systems, nuclear software systems—exactly what kind isn't clear—and Israeli infrastructure. Aside from that state-sponsored hacking, he was also allegedly a member of a group known as the Turk Black Hat Security Team, which is responsible for defacing hundreds of website in the US and elsewhere.

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But the penetration of HBO that Mesri is accused of carrying out went far beyond mere website defacement. The indictment states that starting with reconnaissance activities in May, he compromised HBO staffer accounts to gain deep access to the company's network. In late July, he began releasing his stolen data, along with a series of ransom letters sent to HBO's executives and to the press. A message in one video he is alleged to have created and shared with press, including WIRED, read, "Leakage will be your worst nightmare...So make a wise decision!" The video adopted the "Winter is Coming" warning from Game of Thrones, adding "HBO is Falling," and ended with an image of the "Night King"—the archvillain in the show—with his arms raised, the word "standing" in one hand and "falling" in the other.