The US Justice Department unsealed charges on 8 October against Zohar Pinhasi, chief executive of the ransomware-recovery firm MonsterCloud, alleging he defrauded clients by secretly negotiating and paying ransom demands while billing them for services he presented as delivering decryption. Prosecutors say MonsterCloud billed victims more than US$19 million across the scheme. The case matters because it targets the recovery industry itself: the allegation is that a firm marketed itself to victims as an alternative to paying criminals while in fact paying them and charging a markup, which attacks the single assurance on which the sector's credibility rests — that a recovery vendor is not negotiating with the attacker. Charges were reported the same day by CyberScoop, The Record and Help Net Security.

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