The two-count indictment against 28 year old hacker Albert Gonzalez was filed last summer in New Jersey and charged him with the theft of 130 million credit and debit cards from local firm Heartland Payment Systems, which processes credit card transactions for thousands of US businesses.
Gonzalez’s decision to plead guilty on the Heartland hack came to light after a filing made by his lawyers in the county’s District Court. It will result in the case being transferred to Massachusetts, where the hacker is already awaiting sentencing on other crimes to which he likewise pleaded guilty in August.
A federal court in Boston had charged him, along with two unnamed Russian colleagues, with 19 counts of hacking into the IT systems of numerous retailers before stealing tens of millions of credit card numbers and related data. Apart from Heartland, the other victims of his hack included TJX, OfficeMax and Barnes & Noble.
At the time of the Boston deal, Gonzalez, a former Secret Service informant who went under the handle ‘segvec’ and ‘Cumbajohnny’, agreed to hand over almost $3 million in cash, his Miami condominium, BMW car, Tiffany diamond ring and a Glock 27 firearm taken from him when he was arrested.
The hacker now faces between 15 and 25 years in prison plus a possible fine for his activity in Massachusetts, but the court documents did not indicate what penalty prosecutors are seeking as part of the plea bargaining arrangement.
Sentencing for the Heartland hacker is now likely to be delayed, however, to allow the court time to take the new guilty plea into consideration and to give the US government, defense and probation offices breathing space to re-evaluate their positions on suitable penalties.