SAN FRANCISCO — A U.S. judge in San Francisco pushed back a sentencing hearing for a 23-year-old Ancaster man, Karim Baratov, who prosecutors say was hired by Russian intelligence agent Dmitry Dokuchaev to breach at least 80 email accounts obtained from a massive Yahoo hack in 2014.

Prosecutors said Tuesday that two Russian intelligence agents, Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, used information they stole from Yahoo to spy on Russian journalists, U.S. and Russian government officials, and employees of financial services and other private businesses.

Judge Vince Chhabria questioned whether the sentence of seven years and 10 months that prosecutors were seeking for Baratov was longer than what other hackers had received for similar crimes.

Baratov's attorneys have called for a sentence of three years and nine months.

Chhabria stressed that Baratov was not behind the Yahoo hack. He rescheduled the sentencing hearing for May 29.

Authorities have described Baratov as an "international hacker-for-hire" who hacked more than 11,000 webmail accounts from around 2010 until his March 2017 arrest and used the money he made — roughly $1.1 million at about $100 per hacking victim — to finance a $650,000 home and fancy cars, including a Lamborghini and Aston Martin.

Meanwhile, the company formerly known as Yahoo is paying a $35-million fine to resolve federal regulators' charges that the online pioneer deceived investors by failing to disclose one of the biggest data breaches in internet history.