Cybercrime
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Fraud Management & Cybercrime
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Geo-Specific
Aleksanteri Tomminpoika Kivimäki Has Eluded Finnish Authorities for Months
A Europe-wide wanted notice has been issued for a notorious Finnish hacker convicted of stealing the psychotherapy records of 33,000 people after he went on the run to avoid serving the remainder of his prison sentence.
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The Itä-Uudenmaan Police Department in Finland has asked for Aleksanteri Tomminpoika Kivimäki, 29, to be arrested if he is found in any European Union country after he has been missing for months from authorities, reported Finnish public broadcaster Yle.
The arrest warrant expands a Finland-wide notice issued in June when he failed to report back to prison. The Helsinki Court of Appeal sentenced him to six years and 11 months in prison for hacking psychotherapy center Vastaamo and publishing patient data online, resulting in at least one suicide.
Kivimäki’s lawyer Peter Jaari has lost touch with the escapee since the summer, he told Yle. Jaari said he suspected Kivimäki was still abroad after he left Finland in the fall of last year, reported Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat.
Kivimäki breached the psychotherapy chain’s database in 2018 and published 300 patients’ therapy session notes. He later emailed victims demanding 200 euros in cryptocurrency, while Vastaamo, which went bankrupt following the attack, received a 450,000-euro extortion demand. Prosecutors said Kivimäki’s bank account showed several payments made during the period of the criminal activity.
Kivimäki was convicted of aggravated data breach, attempted aggravated extortion, 20 counts of aggravated extortion, 9,231 counts of aggravated dissemination of information that violates privacy and 20,745 counts of aggravated extortion, said IS.
The District Court of Länsi-Uusimaa initially sentenced Kivimäki to six years and three months in prison in April 2024. It then ordered his release a year ago after determining that he had been held in pretrial detention for too long under Finnish law and that he could wait for the appeal verdict on parole (see: Finnish Vastaamo Hacker Freed While Appealing Conviction).
The appeal ended up adding another eight months to his sentence, leaving him with several months still to serve. The Finnish embassy to the United States declined comment.
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