Romanian gets 5 years in prison for hacking Oregon govt network

A Romanian national was sentenced this week to 56 months in federal prison for breaking into an Oregon state government computer network and fr cyberattacks targeting dozens of other U.S. victims.

46-year-old Catalin Dragomir (who used the online handle "inthematrixl") of Constanta, Romania, pleaded guilty on February 19 to one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of obtaining information from a protected computer.

The charges carried a maximum of five years in prison for the computer intrusion count, followed by a mandatory consecutive two-year term for the identity theft count, a fine of $250,000, and three years' supervised release. The court also ordered Dragomir to forfeit approximately 23 Monero (XMR), a cryptocurrency, valued at roughly $8,500.

According to court documents, Dragomir gained unauthorized access to a computer on the network of the Oregon Department of Emergency Management (then called the Oregon Office of Emergency Management) in June 2021 and subsequently sold that access to a prospective buyer.

The prosecutors added that during the transaction, Dragomir provided the buyer with samples of personally identifiable information (including names, email addresses, dates of birth, and passport numbers) taken from the hacked device.

He also sold access to the networks of nearly a dozen other victims across the United States, which led to total losses of at least $250,000.

Dragomir was arrested in Romania in November 2024 following coordination among the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs, the Romanian Ministry of Justice, the Directorate for International Law and Judicial Cooperation, and the Romanian Judiciary, and was extradited to the United States in January 2025.

The case was investigated by the FBI's Portland Field Office and prosecuted by the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. Since 2020, that section has secured court orders to return over $350 million in victim funds following convictions against more than 180 cybercriminals and intellectual property criminals.

This week, the U.S. Justice Department also announced that a Canadian man was sentenced to 33 years in prison after admitting to targeting over 145 children across the United States in an eight-year-long sextortion scheme.