A former Leumi Card employee convicted of stealing information from the credit card company’s database as a precursor to blackmail has beensentenced to 11 years in prison. Eliran Rosnis admittedthe charges against him on Monday morning; they included invasion of privacy, breach of trust, and extortion. Among the charges was a serious felony which was not cleared for publication.
Three judges, led by Miriam Diskin, convicted Rosnis based on his confession Monday morning. Rosnis, a 31-year-old former Leumi Card employee admitted to stealing the database with two million credit card numbers before the end of his employment.
In November 2014, Leumi Card received an anonymous message claiming the sender had the credit card account numbers of its customers and they would be released if the firm failed to pay a ransom sparking a contentious discussion among the top brass. According to statements made in the past by Bank Leumi chairman David Brodet, several high-ranking executives believed the breach to be severe and immanently threatening to the bank, leading them to support paying the ransom in a bid to quickly end the affair.
After the bank notified the police, the latter initiated an undercover investigation which eventually led to the arrest of eight suspects including six former employees. The Ministry of Justice said at the time the affair was the most significant cyber security event exposed in Israel in the past few years.
The indictment to which Rosnis confessed said he sent the ransom demand from a fictitious email address and threatened to publish or sell a database with the details of 1.5 million bank customers if he was not paid $3 million.
The indictment revealed Rosnis flew to Thailand, assuming it would be easier to hide his identity and evade arrest there. He was later arrested at a hostel in Pattaya, in a joint operation by Israel Police and Thai police.
In a related charge, Rosnis was convicted of using stolen credit card information. In one method, he built a website offering mobile accessories. Together with his partner, they used the stolen credit cards to purchase non-existent merchandise from their own website netting NIS 50,000 by stealing from dozens of Leumi customers.
He was further convicted of stealing credit card information even before stealing the database; while still an employee, Rosnis would listen in on phone conversations between clients and customer service to extract credit card details which he then stole.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 19, 2016
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