Former incident responders sentenced to 4 years in prison for committing ransomware attacks

Two former cybersecurity professionals who moonlighted as cybercriminals, committing a series of ransomware attacks in 2023, were each sentenced to four years in prison, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Ryan Clifford Goldberg and Kevin Tyler Martin previously pleaded guilty to one of three charges brought against them in December and faced up to 20 years behind bars. 

Goldberg, who was a manager of incident response at Sygnia, and Martin, a ransomware negotiator at DigitalMint at the time, collaborated with Angelo John Martino III to attack victim computers and networks and use ALPHV, also known as BlackCat, ransomware to extort payments.

“These defendants exploited specialized cybersecurity knowledge not to protect victims, but to extort them,” Jason A. Reding Quiñones, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “They used ransomware to lock down critical systems, steal sensitive data, and pressure American businesses into paying to regain access to their own information.”

Victims impacted by the attacks Goldberg and Martin participated in over a six-month period in 2023 included a medical company based in Florida, a pharmaceutical company based in Maryland, a California doctor’s office, an engineering company based in California and a drone manufacturer in Virginia. 

“They harmed important firms who were providing medical and engineering services. They played hardball with them, going so far as to cause the leak of patient data from a doctor’s office victim,” A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in a statement.

“These were supposed to be cybersecurity specialists who did good and helped businesses and people. Instead, they used their high-level cyber skills to feed their greed. Ransomware attackers like this should be punished and removed from society to serve their lawful sentences so they cannot harm others,” Duva added.

Goldberg and Martin received identical sentences for their crimes, despite significant differences surrounding their initial arrests. Martin was arrested without incident in October and freed on bond later that month.

Goldberg fled the country in June, 10 days after he was interviewed by the FBI. He was arrested Sept. 22 and ordered to remain in custody pending trial due to flight risk. 

Goldberg and his wife boarded a one-way flight to Paris from Atlanta on June 27 and remained in Europe until Sept. 21. When Goldberg flew directly from Amsterdam to Mexico City, he was arrested upon landing and deported to the United States.

“When Goldberg sought to flee abroad and escape prosecution, the FBI tracked him through 10 countries, demonstrating the lengths we will go to hold cyber criminals accountable and protect victims,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said in a statement.

The cases against Golberg, Martin and their co-conspirator Martino showcase an extreme, albeit rare, example of the dark underbelly of ransomware negotiation as a practice. The pitfalls of ransomware negotiation are excessive and these backchannel negotiations, which remain largely unscrutinized, can go awry for various reasons.

Goldberg, 40, and Martin, 36, extorted a $1.3 million ransom payment from the medical company with Martino in May 2023, but did not receive ransom payments from their other victims.

Martino’s ransomware scheme went much further and caused significantly more damage, helping accomplices extort a combined $75.3 million in ransom payments. Five of Martino’s victims hired DigitalMint, which assigned the 41-year-old to conduct ransomware negotiations on their clients’ behalf — a rare position he exploited to play both sides.

He pleaded guilty earlier this month to sharing confidential information about victim organizations’ internal negotiating positions and insurance policy limits he gained from his work as a ransomware negotiator to extract the maximum ransom payment for himself and other BlackCat affiliates.

The five U.S.-based victims that hired DigitalMint and unwittingly tapped Martino to allegedly conduct ransomware negotiations with himself and his co-conspirators include a nonprofit and companies in the hospitality, financial services, retail and medical industries. All five of those victims paid a ransom.

Martino surrendered in March to the U.S. Marshals in Miami and was released on a $500,000 bond. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison and is scheduled for sentencing July 9.

Sygnia and DigitalMint are not accused of any knowledge or involvement in the crimes, and both previously said they fired their former employees once federal authorities alerted the companies to their alleged crimes. 

ALPHV/BlackCat was a notorious ransomware and extortion group linked to a series of attacks on critical infrastructure providers. The ransomware variant first appeared in late 2021, and was later used in dozens of attacks on organizations in the health care sector.

The group behind the ransomware strain also claimed responsibility for the February 2024 attack on UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Change Healthcare, which paid a $22 million ransom and became the largest health care data breach on record, compromising data on about 190 million people.