An elite British “hacktivist” jailed in 2011 for leading the group that famously hacked Gawker’s and released more than a million of the news-gossip web site’s user emails and passwords was only captured after the feds flipped an upstate New York autistic man who was one of his accomplices, court filings show.
The previously sealed documents, leaked to and published by The Smoking Gun website Tuesday, show how Thomas “Eekdacat” Madden, 26, of Troy, NJ, helped authorities identify and arrest Ryan Ackroyd, a 27-year-old Brit, and also became a cooperating government witness to help snare other top members of the notorious computer-hacking group known as “Anonymous.
Previous reports have linked the arrests and indictments solely to Hector Xavier Monsegur, a famed hacker known as “Sabu” from the Lower East Side who the feds busted and flipped.
Ackroyd, a former British soldier and Iraq War vet, pleaded guilty to posing as a 16-year-old hacker named “Kayla” and pulling off a series of UK-based cyber attacks. He was captured after the FBI provided information to British authorities.
Madden was nabbed by the FBI after bragging about being part of the December 2010 Gawker hack to a college classmate, who ultimately ratted him out to the feds.
Following Madden’s arrest, a court-ordered mental competency exam determined he “has a form of autism” which can affect his “social interaction and judgment, among other things,” according to an FBI affidavit.
Because of that, the hacking charges against him were dropped and he became a cooperating witness because he was “highly-functioning in other areas, including the ability to recall information,” the document says.
Ackroyd and three other foreign nationals with ties to Anonymous and offshoot hacktivist groups were indicted by a Manhattan federal jury in 2012 for carrying out a series of cyberattacks – although the Gawker attack is not cited in the indictment.
Prosecutors declined comment when asked if there are plans to extradite the four foreign co-defendants to the United States to face felony charges.
Computer whiz Jeremy Hammond of Chicago was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in the case last year. He copped a plea to stealing a treasure trove of data that included credit-card information from the private intelligence firm Stratfor’s website.