Martin Kevin (Kevin Martin)

Biography

2026: Extortionist Virus Money Theft Charge

In early January 2026, the US Department of Justice announced that two cybersecurity specialists had admitted to being involved in hacker attacks. With the help of a ransomware program, they earned tens of millions of rubles.

According to the Ministry of Justice, 40-year-old Ryan Goldberg from Georgia and 36-year-old Kevin Martin from Texas admitted that they acted as partners of the hacker group BlackCat (also known as Alphv), which develops ransomware viruses. In October 2025, a third, unnamed, participant in cyber attacks was charged with them.

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Фото: Freepik

The defendants hacked into the companies' computer systems, USA stole data and deployed encryption malware files. As partners of BlackCat, they paid 20% of the ransom received from the victims to the organizers of the group in exchange for access to the platform for managing attacks. During the investigation, it turned out that the accused received a ransom of $1.2 million from one of the victim companies. to cryptocurrency Bitcoin

Ryan Goldberg served as incident response manager for cybersecurity company Sygnia. Kevin Martin worked as a buyout negotiator for threat analysis and incident investigation company DigitalMint. The third defendant was also an employee of DigitalMint. All three faces up to 20 years in prison. The date for the announcement of the verdict is set for March 12, 2026.

According to SecurityWeek, from November 2021 to December 2023, BlackCat attacked more than 1,000 organizations. After the partial defeat of the group at the end of 2023, the criminals continued to work, receiving a ransom of $22 million from Change Healthcare in 2024, after which they suddenly disappeared. Since the beginning of 2024, the United States has been offering $10 million for information about the leaders of BlackCat, but they have not been charged.^[1]

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