British Hacker Sentenced to 3.5 Years in Prison for Compromising Coinbase Accounts
A British hacker, Elliot Gunton, has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for his involvement in a Coinbase phishing scam, in which he compromised over 500 accounts through phishing websites in 2018 and 2019, generating nearly a million dollars.
Gunton, who was between 17 and 18 years old at the time of the crimes, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud outside the UK and money laundering.
Details of the Hack and Previous Convictions
Gunton and his accomplices stole over $900,000 by redirecting user logins to a fake website. Judge Alice Robinson of the Crown Court in Norwich described the scam as “highly sophisticated,” requiring significant planning and technical expertise.
This is not Gunton’s first brush with criminal activities. In 2019, he was sentenced to 20 months in prison for stealing TalkTalk customer data in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency, although he avoided jail by completing a 12-month rehabilitation order. He was also ordered to repay approximately $500,000 after hacking into several celebrity and public figure Instagram accounts.
