The Financial Post reports in its Wednesday edition that a Ukrainian hacker has been sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison for stealing unpublished news releases that helped a criminal network make $30-million (U.S.) trading securities with non-public information. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says that Vadym Iermolovych, 29, was sentenced in Federal Court in Newark, N.J., where he previously pleaded guilty to working with two other Ukrainian hackers to steal 150,000 releases from computer networks at PR Newswire, Business Wire and Marketwired. He was the fourth person to plead guilty in Newark or Brooklyn, N.Y., and the first hacker to do so. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo also ordered Mr. Iermolovych to pay $3-million (U.S.) in restitution. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud in connection with computers and aggravated identity theft. He had faced as many as 20 years in prison for the wire fraud conspiracy. In sentencing Mr. Iermolovych, Judge Arleo gave him credit for co-operating with government investigators. Hackers broke into the networks of three companies, stealing draft releases and allowing others to make stock trades in advance of their public distribution.