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Celebrity hacker Guccifer indicted in U.S. following 7-year sentence in Romania

Releasing George W. Bush's childlike bathroom selfie paintings: Probably not worth it.

 

Kevin Collier

Tech

Posted on Jun 13, 2014   Updated on May 31, 2021, 3:32 am CDT

One week after being sentenced for unrelated hacking charges in his native Romania, the celebrity-hacking celebrity hacker Marcel Lazar Lehel—better known as Guccifer—has been indicted in the U.S.

Lehel, 40, is charged, of course, for hacking celebrities, specifically the Bush family, which has produced two of the U.S.’s four most recent presidents, as well as some of their aides. In 2013, Guccifer released a cache of photos from those emails, including evidence that former President George W. Bush had been painting portraits of himself in the bathroom.

According to Lehel’s indictment, his cybersecuirty breaches weren’t all so lighthearted, allegedly hacking one Bush-associated Facebook account to post “You will burn in hell, Bush!” and using those email addresses to send “the 9/11 victim’s blood is on my hands” to media organizations.

The U.S. Department of Justice refused to comment on whether it would try to extradite Lehel. If it does, it’ll have to be patient: His recent sentence will put him in prison for up to seven years.

Photo by .v1ctor Casale/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

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*First Published: Jun 13, 2014, 12:53 pm CDT