The federal court in San Jose picked up a piece of the arrests of 14 people in the U.S. allegedly part of the cyber attack group calling itself “Anonymous.” FBI arrested the 14 in a sweep in nine states and the District of Columbia, according to a statement by U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag.
The group allegedly coordinated cyber attacks against major companies. The case in San Jose stems from alleged retaliation against PayPal for its termination of a WikiLeaks donation account. The government alleges the group launched a denial of service attack against PayPal in an effort to make the company’s computers unusable by legitimate customers by bombarding company computers with requests.
In addition to 35 FBI search warrants executed Tuesday, the United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police Service arrested one person and the Dutch National Police Agency arrested four others, all for allegedly related cyber crimes.
The U.S. arrests were in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and the District of Columbia, along with California.
The San Jose indictment names 13 individuals. They are charged with conspiracy, intentional damage of a protected computer and aiding and abetting the conspiracy.
The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, but that may change because Fogel has taken an assignment to head the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C. and will leave the court for at least a year.
Case: U.S. v. Cooper, No. CR11-471JF
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