A former U.S. Army soldier has been sentenced to 70 months in prison for hacking and extorting at least 10 U.S. technology and telecommunications companies between April 2023 and December 2024.
21-year-old Cameron John Wagenius (also known online as 'kiberphant0m' and 'cyb3rph4nt0m' ) was arrested in Texas in December 2024.
He pleaded guilty in February 2025 to hacking AT&T and Verizon after being charged on two counts of unlawfully transferring confidential phone records, and in July 2025 to multiple counts of aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and extortion related to computer fraud.
According to court documents, while on active duty with the U.S. Army, Wagenius and his accomplices stole login credentials for the victim's networks using the SSH Brute hacking tool he helped develop. They also used Telegram to transfer stolen credentials and plan their attacks.
"After data was stolen, Wagenius and his conspirators extorted the victim organizations both privately and in public forums. The extortion attempts included threats to post the stolen data on cybercrime forums such as BreachForums and XSS.is," the Justice Department said.
"In other instances, conspirators offered to sell stolen data for thousands of dollars via posts on these forums. They successfully sold at least some of this stolen data and also used stolen data to perpetuate other frauds, including SIM-swapping. In total, Wagenius and his co-conspirators attempted to extort at least $1 million from victim data owners."