Washington: Two Vietnamese citizens and a Canadian have been charged over roles in hacking email service providers in the United States in one of the largest reported data breaches in the nation`s history, the Department of Justice said on Friday.
Viet Quoc Nguyen, 28, is charged with hacking at least eight email service providers between February 2009 and June 2012 and obtaining more than one billion email addresses.
According to the allegations, Nguyen and fellow Vietnamese citizen Giang Hoang Vu, 25, used the data to send so-called spam to tens of millions of people.
Both men resided in the Netherlands. Vu, who was extradited to the United States in March of last year, pleaded guilty on Thursday to conspiracy to commit computer fraud.
Nguyen remains at large.
The other defendant, Canadian David-Manuel Santos Da Silva, 33, was charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is the co-owner of a company called 21 Celsius Inc, that allegedly struck up a marketing arrangement with Nguyen and Vu to generate revenue and launder the proceeds, according to the Justice Department.
