The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has confirmed that cyber-criminals who raided the organization in December have leaked some of those documents online.

In a brief statement on Tuesday, it noted that the docs “related to COVID-19 medicines and vaccines belonging to third parties.

“The agency continues to fully support the criminal investigation into the data breach and to notify any additional entities and individuals whose documents and personal data may have been subject to unauthorized access,” it added.

“The agency and the European medicines regulatory network remain fully functional and timelines related to the evaluation and approval of COVID-19 medicines and vaccines are not affected.”

Although the EMA has been tight-lipped on exactly what had been taken, BioNTech revealed back in December that documents related to the vaccine it and Pfizer developed were part of the haul.

It’s unclear whether any other data, such as that related to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, was stolen by the attackers. As Europe’s medical regulator, the EMA will need access to sensitive IP on all of the COVID-19 vaccines and medicines currently being slated for use within the EU.

At the end of December, the EMA clarified that the attack was limited to one application, although other details remain scarce while the investigation is still ongoing.

It’s also unclear whether the data is up for sale or it has simply been published for anyone to access, which could be a clue as to whether the attack was the work of nation state attackers, financially motivated cyber-criminals or hacktivists.

IP related to COVID-19 vaccines IP developed in the West has been targeted by nation state operatives from China, Russia and North Korea for much of 2020.

Warnings from the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), Microsoft and US authorities were repeated multiple times throughout the year.

In October, an Indian pharmaceutical firm making Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccine was also forced to shut several facilities after an unspecified incident.

The first independent ethics officer to be appointed by the Florida city of Tallahassee has been arrested on cyber-stalking charges. 

Julie Meadows-Keefe is accused of stalking former city auditor Bert Fletcher, with whom she had an on-off romantic relationship both during and after the time when they both worked for Tallahassee.

The State Attorney’s Office charged 51-year-old Meadows-Keefe with the first-degree misdemeanor on January 11. After appearing before Leon County Judge Augustus D. Aikens Jr. yesterday, Meadows-Keefe was released on pretrial conditions that prohibit her from having contact with Fletcher or any of his family members.

The judge further barred Meadows-Keefe from using electronic devices with internet access except for the purposes of work, banking, conducting attorney business, and paying bills.

Meadows-Keefe was hired by Fletcher and former city attorney Lew Shelley in 2014 to train city elected officials and employees on ethics.

Fletcher and Meadows-Keefe, whose City Hall offices were adjacent, began a romantic relationship while both were still married. Fletcher continued the relationship with Meadows-Keefe after divorcing from his wife and retiring from the city in 2017, but the relationship broke down in 2018. 

Meadows-Keefe, who now works for a local law firm, was arrested Monday after allegedly making threats of physical violence against Fletcher. The probable cause affidavit alleges that Meadows-Keefe harassed the victim repeatedly starting December 21, 2020, with hundreds of phone calls, emails, and text messages. 

Fletcher said that he had been receiving nuisance phone calls from an “unknown” number he believes belongs to Meadows-Keefe throughout 2019 and 2020, despite changing his number at the end of 2019.

The pair rekindled their relationship in late September 2020 after Fletcher answered one of the calls and it turned out to be from Meadows-Keefe. The former ethics officer divorced her husband the following month.

Fletcher ended the relationship in December. Meadows-Keefe confirmed to a State Attorney’s Office investigator that she had been calling Fletcher but said that he had not asked her to stop doing so.

Meadows-Keefe recently settled a lawsuit against Tallahassee in which she claimed that she was retaliated against and forced to leave her position early after using  public funds to join the Tiger Bay Club.

The owner of a Bulgarian bitcoin exchange has been sentenced to prison in the United States for his involvement in a transnational multimillion-dollar online auction fraud scheme that conned over 900 Americans out of more than $7m.

After a two-week trial in September 2020, a federal jury in Kentucky found Rossen G. Iossifov guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit racketeering and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. On January 12, US District Court Judge Robert E. Weir sentenced 53-year-old Bulgarian native Iossifov to 121 months in prison.

Iossifov owned and managed RG Coins, a cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Bulgaria’s capital city, Sofia. According to trial evidence, Iossifov knowingly and intentionally engaged in business practices designed to both assist fraudsters in laundering the proceeds of their fraud and to protect himself from any criminal liability. 

At least five of Iossifov’s principal clients were Romanian scammers, who belonged to a criminal enterprise referred to in court records as the Alexandria (Romania) Online Auction Fraud (AOAF) Network. 

These scammers defrauded hundreds of individuals by posting false advertisements to popular online auction and sales websites, including Craigslist and eBay, for high-cost goods (typically vehicles) that did not actually exist.

“Once victims were convinced to send payment, the conspiracy engaged in a complicated money laundering scheme wherein domestic associates would accept victim funds, convert these funds to cryptocurrency, and transfer proceeds in the form of cryptocurrency to foreign-based money launderers,” said the Department of Justice.

“Iossifov was one such foreign-based money launderer who facilitated this final step in the scheme.”

Iossifov allowed his criminal clients to complete cryptocurrency exchanges for cash without asking for any identification or documentation to show the source of funds. He also gave members of the AOAF Network special treatment by providing them with more favorable exchange rates than he offered to his other customers.

An investigation by law enforcement found that Iossifov laundered nearly $5m in cryptocurrency for four of the five scammers in fewer than three years. In return, the bitcoin exchange owner made over $184,000.

Iossifov is one of 17 members of AOAF who have been convicted for their role in this scheme so far.