Authorities charged Robert Westbrook on Friday with multiple counts of fraud after evidence showed he allegedly hacked the emails of senior executives

A UK man allegedly used genealogy sites to hack execs’ email accounts and make millions on stock trades

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2024-09-28 15:30:07

Authorities charged Robert Westbrook on Friday with multiple counts of fraud after evidence showed he allegedly hacked the emails of senior executives from at least five U.S.-based companies and read their inboxes. Westbrook, 39, is accused of then trading ahead of the companies’ earnings results, reaping millions in illicit profits.

According to a U.S. district court indictment and a concurrent complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the hack-to-trade scheme followed a similar pattern at each of the five targets he chose. The London-based executive—who claimed to have attended the University of Oxford—would first reset a senior executive’s computer system password, then use the new login to hack their Microsoft Office 365 account and Microsoft Outlook email box.

Westbrook’s ploy relied on being able to crack executives’ passwords based on correctly guessing the answers to reset questions, according to the SEC. He maintained active subscriptions to VPN service providers that he allegedly used to conceal his identity, and subscriptions to online genealogy services to help him answer the security questions that pop up in a password reset.