Nine charged in press release breaches, stock trading scheme

Nine people face criminal charges in the U.S. for allegedly hacking three press release distributors and stealing yet-to-be-published announcements in a stock trading scheme that authorities say generated about US$30 million in illegal profits.

Indictments unsealed Tuesday in the district courts for New Jersey and Eastern New York accused the defendants of stealing approximately 150,000 confidential press releases from the servers of Marketwired, PR Newswire Association and Business Wire. The defendants allegedly used the information from more than 800 stolen press releases to conduct stock trades, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

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