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by Mike Caswell

Vadym Iermolovych, one of the Ukrainian men charged in a newswire hacking scheme, has pleaded guilty to criminal fraud and theft charges in New Jersey. Mr. Iermolovych, 28, entered the plea in an appearance on Monday, May 16, before U.S. District Court Judge Madeline Arleo. In entering the plea, he admitted that he was personally involved in stealing and selling confidential news releases.

Prosecutors claimed that Mr. Iermolovych was part of a scheme that targeted three newswire services, including Toronto's Marketwired LP. Traders in the scheme obtained $30-million in illegal profits using unpublished news releases from the wire services. Mr. Iermolovych's role included selling releases obtained from Marketwired and hacking into another wire service, PR Newswire.

In pleading guilty, Mr. Iermolovych has explained, at least in the barest of terms, how his portion of the scheme worked. He has admitted that he obtained a set of user credentials for PR Newswire that were stolen in a hack on a social networking website. He then used those credentials to access PR Newswire's network. He also sold news releases that other hackers stole from Marketwired. His part in the scheme took place over three months, starting in January, 2013.

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