Vietnamese hacker sentenced to 13 years in prison in the US

Ngo was sentenced on July 14 in a U.S. district court in New Hampshire for identity fraud, access device fraud and wire fraud, according to the Financial Times. He was arrested in February 2013 when he entered the U.S.

From 2007 to 2013, the hacker worked from his home in Vietnam to break into computers systems and collected information including Social Security numbers, bank accounts, credit card details, names, addresses, phone numbers and birthdays, Yahoo! Tech reported.

He would then advertise the stolen identities on websites he operated which have since been shut down.

“Specifically, Ngo admitted that he offered access to PII (personally identifiable information) for 200 million U.S. citizens, and that more than 1,300 customers from around the world conducted more than three million ‘queries’ through the third-party databases maintained on his websites,” the Justice Department said in a press release, according to NBC.

Hieu made nearly $2 million from his scheme, according to NBC.

Hieu, commonly known among hackers as traztaz659 and hieupc, was born in 1989 in Gia Lai, Vietnam. He was a former student at the Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland (New Zealand) in 2008-2009.

Previously in New Zealand, Hieu was also allegedly involved in credit fraud using Trademe accounts (an online auction site like eBay).