Between September 2021 and April 2023, Buchanan and others planned cyber attacks on entertainment, telecommunications, technology, and virtual currency companies, according to the DOJ.<\/p>\n
The group sent hundreds of phishing messages to employees of those organisation, then used their stolen credentials to access accounts and steal confidential company information.<\/p>\n
Buchanan admitted in his plea agreement that he and several co-conspirators used the stolen information stolen to steal millions of dollars’ worth of virtual currency.<\/p>\n
A digital device found at Buchanan’s Scotland home showed he possessed the names and addresses of numerous people, including a file that contained cryptocurrency seed phrases and login information for one victim’s account.<\/p>\n
In total, the scheme involved the theft of at least $8m worth of virtual currency assets from individuals throughout the US, the DOJ said.<\/p>\n
Buchanan pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.<\/p>\n
In November 2023, Buchanan was charged by the US along with four American men and boys in their twenties and teens for alleged activity linked to the notorious cyber-criminal collective Scattered Spider.<\/p>\n
The DOJ named 21-year-old Noah Michael Urban, who pleaded guilty in April 2025 to three fraud-related counts, as a co-conspirator.<\/p>\n
He is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence and was ordered to pay $13m in restitution.<\/p>\n
The FBI is continuing to investigate the case, with three other defendants – all based in America and in their 20s – also facing criminal charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Between September 2021 and April 2023, Buchanan and others planned cyber attacks on entertainment, telecommunications, technology, and virtual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-537529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}