Two men have pleaded guilty to hacking into a federal law enforcement database to steal personal information of those they were extorting.

The two men, Sagar Steven Singh (age 20) and Nicholas Ceraolo (age 25) are members of a hacking group called “ViLE,” which accessed the sensitive personal information from the portal and then used it to blackmail the victims, threatening to publish the sensitive data unless they were paid.

Singh (20, also known as  “Convict”, “Anon”, and “Ominous”, and Ceraolo, also known as “Weep”, were charged in March 2023 and now admitted to their criminal conduct for which they face imprisonment sentences ranging from two to seven years.

ViLE activities

The Department of Justice says the two men used a police officer’s stolen account credentials to access a restricted federal law enforcement database containing sensitive records about suspects, enforcement actions, and intelligence reports.

Ceraolo used that account to request more information from social media companies, claiming emergencies and criminal investigations to obtain personal user information.

Next, the two doxed and delivered threats to targeted people, threatening to release personal information such as social security numbers, addresses, and email addresses on a publicly accessible website unless their financial demands were met.

In one case highlighted in a U.S. Department of Justice press release from yesterday, Singh threatened the safety of a target’s family unless they gave him their Instagram account credentials.

This tactic relates to a monetization scheme where Singh sold people’s accounts on social media for profit.

In other cases, Ceraolo impersonated a Bangladeshi police officer to obtain user information from social media platforms, while he also targeted an online gaming platform intending to hack and sell its data.

As internal communications retrieved and analyzed by law enforcement investigators show, Ceraolo and Singh fully understood the nature and gravity of their activities and feared police raids.

The U.S. DOJ has not provided any details on the progress of the ongoing investigations to identify and prosecute the remaining members.