Marcel Lehel Lazar, the 44-year-old Romanian national known online as “Guccifer,” has returned to Romania after being convicted in the United States on hacking and identity theft charges.
Guccifer has been incarcerated at the Rahova Penitentiary, the largest jail in Romania’s capital city of Bucharest, where he will spend 21 days before authorities decide where he will serve his time.
Lazar was sentenced in early September by a court in the Eastern District of Virginia to 52 months in prison.
The man was initially charged with wire fraud, unauthorized access to a protected computer, cyber stalking, aggravated identity theft and obstruction of justice. After being extradited from Romania to the United States, he pleaded guilty to unauthorized access to a protected computer and aggravated identity theft.
Guccifer became famous after hacking the online accounts of members of the Bush family. He later targeted the accounts of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, journalists, actors, former members of the U.S. Cabinet and the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a former presidential advisor. He also claimed to have hacked Hillary Clinton’s private email server, but failed to prove it.
Lazar was arrested in Romania in 2014 and sentenced to 7 years in prison for accessing the email accounts of politician Corina Cretu and George Maior, who at the time was the head of the country’s intelligence service.
Lazar, known by Romanian authorities as “Little Fume,” had previously received a three-year suspended sentence for breaking into the online accounts of numerous local celebrities.
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Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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