Ransomware consultant said he would decrypt data, is accused of paying ransoms instead

Zohar Pinhasi, also known as Zack Silver and Zack Green, has been arraigned in New York on wire fraud charges. As the owner of MonsterCloud, a ransomware remediation company, Pinhasi allegedly defrauded clients by falsely claiming he could recover encrypted documents without paying ransoms. District attorney Joseph Nocella stated that Pinhasi re-victimized his clients to extract significant profits. MonsterCloud had marketed its decryption techniques as a viable alternative to paying ransoms to help businesses recover data.