A man from Georgia admitted Tuesday to his role in an insider-trading scheme that netted $30 million based on key information from hacked press releases.
Leonid Momotok, 48, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for using the stolen corporate press releases to trade ahead of their publication.
“I profited from these trades. It was bad judgment and I am very sorry,” he told Brooklyn federal court Judge Ramon Reyes.
Hackers in the Ukraine gained access to more than 150,000 releases containing quarterly reports and disseminated the information to traders like Momotok, a US citizen who lives in Suwanee, Georgia.
The infiltrators targeted three major companies Marketwired LP, PR Newswire Association LLC and Business Wire.
Some of them were caught discussing their illegal activity in Russian in online messages.
“I’m hacking prnewswire.com,” one of them wrote to a cohort.
Hackers said in another chat that they compromised the log-in credentials of 15 Business Wire employees.
Meanwhile, traders would create “wish lists” for certain press releases for publicly traded companies, authorities said.
Momotok was arrested last year along with eight others, including Pennsylvania pastor Vitaly Korchevsky, who was partners with the alleged mastermind of the scheme.
Korchevsky is still fighting the charges.
Momotok faces between 6 1/2 and 8 years behind bars at his sentencing in December.
His attorney had no comment.