Former incident responders sentenced to 4 years in prison for committing ransomware attacks
Former incident responders sentenced to 4 years in prison for committing ransomware attacks
https://cyberscoop.com/incident-responders-ryan-goldberg-kevin-martin-sentenced-ransomware/
Publish Date: 2026-04-30 19:31:00
Source Domain: cyberscoop.com
Two former cybersecurity professionals who moonlighted as cybercriminals, committing a series of ransomware attacks in 2023, were each sentenced to four years in prison, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Ryan Clifford Goldberg and Kevin Tyler Martin previously pleaded guilty to one of three charges brought against them in December and faced up to 20 years behind bars.
Goldberg, who was a manager of incident response at Sygnia, and Martin, a ransomware negotiator at DigitalMint at the time, collaborated with Angelo John Martino III to attack victim computers and networks and use ALPHV, also known as BlackCat, ransomware to extort payments.
“These defendants exploited specialized cybersecurity knowledge not to protect victims, but to extort them,” Jason A. Reding Quiñones, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “They used ransomware to lock down critical systems, steal sensitive data, and pressure American businesses into paying to regain access to their own information.”
Victims impacted by the attacks Goldberg and Martin participated in over a six-month period in 2023 included a medical company based in Florida, a pharmaceutical company based in Maryland, a California doctor’s office, an engineering company based in California and a drone manufacturer in Virginia.
“They harmed important firms who were providing medical and engineering services. They played hardball with them, going so far as to cause the leak of patient data from a doctor’s office victim,” A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in a statement.
“These were supposed to be cybersecurity specialists who did good and helped businesses and people. Instead, they used their high-level cyber skills to feed their greed. Ransomware attackers like this should be punished and removed from society to serve their lawful sentences so they cannot harm others,” Duva…
