The FBI on Thursday arrested a Florida man for his role in a bribery scheme tied to the massive 2014 hack of JP Morgan.
{mosads}Michael Murgio has been charged with being part of a plan to bribe a credit union official to help cover up the operations of an illegal bitcoin exchange.
Murgio has been added to an indictment charging three others, including his son Anthony, with operating the exchange and facilitating the bribery, according to Reuters.
According to prosecutors, Gery Shalon owned the bitcoin exchange. They allege that Shalon was one of three men behind a series of hacks, including a massive one that hit JPMorgan, affecting more than 83 million small business and household accounts.
The bitcoin marketplace — Coin.mx — was allegedly used to exchange millions of dollars of the virtual currency.
Shalon, along with Ziv Orenstein and Joshua Samuel Aaron, is charged with computer hacking, wire fraud and securities fraud. The indictment describes the hack as “the largest theft of customer data from a U.S. financial institution in history.”
According to the indictment, the group worked with crooked stockbrokers to pump up prices, laundered money and operated several online casinos along with the illegal bitcoin exchange.
The Murgios — along with co-defendants Yuri Lebedev, a Florida resident; and Trevon Gross, a New Jersey pastor — are not accused of participating in the hacking.
Beginning in 2013, prosecutors say, Anthony Murgio operated Coin.mx while Lebedev oversaw computer programming for the exchange.
In 2014, the indictment reads, the Murgios and Lebedev paid $150,000 in bribes to Gross, chairman of the Helping Other People Excel Federal Credit Union. The bribes allegedly bought the Murgios access to the credit union, which they used to evade detection.
Anthony Murgio, Lebedev and Gross have already pleaded not guilty and are scheduled for trial on Oct. 31.