Ransomware Insider Betrayal: Guilty Plea In BlackCat Cybercrime Scheme

MoneyPersonal FinanceRansomware Insider Betrayal: Guilty Plea In BlackCat Cybercrime SchemeBySteve Weisman,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Steve Weisman writes about white-collar crime.Follow AuthorJun 15, 2026, 12:33pm EDTA padlock in the word ransomwaregettyAngelo Martino, a former employee of cybersecurity incident response company DigitalMint, recently pleaded guilty to charges related to ransomware attacks against American companies.Ransomware is malware used by cybercriminals to encrypt and steal data from the computer networks of targeted companies and then demand a ransom payment in exchange for unlocking the data and agreeing not to publish the sensitive stolen data.Ransomware attacks have been around since 1989, but the early ransomware attacks were relatively rare and the payments small. Ransomware attacks increased dramatically in the 2010s due to the creation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as well as the development of advanced encryption technology which made it more difficult to recover encrypted files. This led to such major disruptive ransomware attacks such as the WannaCry and NotPetya attacks in 2017 that caused tremendous worldwide disruption.Beginning around 2012, but becoming more widely prevalent in 2017, the criminal business model for ransomware attacks dramatically changed. Where previously ransomware attacks were done by individual cybercriminal geniuses (the Lex Luthors of cybercrime) who developed the sophisticated ransomware malware, these criminal geniuses found that it actually was more profitable to provide Ransomware on Demand services to less sophisticated cybercriminals and share the proceeds of the attacks done by these less sophisticated cybercriminals referred to as “affiliates.”The developers of the ransomware create toolkits to utilize the ransomware they create and offer it on the Dark Web, that part of the Internet where criminals buy and sell goods and services. Affi...