New Trial Pending As DOJ Files More Charges Against Capital One Hacker

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has postponed the Capital One trial against alleged hacker Paige A. Thompson following new charges after additional victims were revealed, The Record reported Wednesday (June 30).

The DOJ filed seven new charges against Thompson, who was a former Amazon engineer, and the trial is now scheduled for March 14, 2022. Thompson now faces up to 20 years in prison. Thompson is accused of hacking Capital One and absconding with personal information from over 100 million people in the U.S.

DOJ court documents obtained by The Record and filed earlier in June showed that in addition to the two charges filed in August 2019, seven more were added. The new charges include six counts of computer fraud and abuse, and one count of access device fraud, according to The Record.

The firms that fell victim to the attack increased from four in 2019 to eight currently, including a state agency, a public research university, a telecommunication firm outside of the U.S., plus four technology firms.

Thompson is accused by U.S. prosecutors of leveraging intelligence from her employment with Amazon as well as the scripts used for Amazon Web Service (AWS) servers. She allegedly downloaded company information to her home-based servers, according to the article.

Further, she is accused of installing crypto mining software on misconfigured servers for personal gain. All told, prosecutors said Thompson allegedly downloaded upwards of 20 terabytes of data that belonged to 30-plus companies worldwide.

Prosecutors postponed the trial because of the additional time needed to analyze the data collected from Thompson’s devices, according to the article. Thompson now could see up to 20 years in prison. Previously, Thompson only faced five years based on two charges from the 2019 indictment.

A grand jury convicted Thompson on charges of wire fraud and computer data theft in August 2019. The hack exposed the personal data of more than 100 million people, including over 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers.