Former Fort Hood soldier Cameron John Wagenius was sentenced to more than five years in prison and ordered to repay more than $294,000 for conspiring to hack into telecommunications companies’ databases. (Rose L. Thayer/Stars and Stripes)
A former Fort Hood soldier was sentenced Friday to nearly six years in prison and ordered to repay more than $294,000 for conspiring to hack into telecommunications companies’ databases, access sensitive records and extort the companies by threatening to release the stolen data unless ransoms were paid.
Cameron John Wagenius, 22, made two online posts in November 2024 that disclosed stolen confidential non-content call detail records belonging to a government official and family members of another former official and threatened to release additional confidential records unless paid a ransom, according to the Justice Department. One post suggested that Wagenius was motivated by a desire to retaliate for the then-recent arrest of another cybercriminal.
Judge Lauren King in the Western District of Washington in Seattle sentenced him to 70 months in prison. He pleaded guilty in July 2025.
“Mr. Wagenius engaged in a long spree of criminal conduct attempting to blackmail hacking victims for more than $1 million. He has repeatedly shown disregard for the privacy and security of others, the rules of the military and the law,” said Charles Neil Floyd, first assistant attorney for the Western District of Washington.
Wagenius used the nickname “kiberphant0m” and worked with others to defraud at least 10 organizations by obtaining login credentials for their protected computer networks between April 2023 and December 2024, according to court documents.
The group of hackers used a hacking tool that they called SSH Brute and transferred the stolen information through the Telegram messaging application. The group then attempted to extort at least $1 million from each organization privately and in public forums — threatening to post the stolen data on cybercrime forums and sell it for thousands of dollars.
They successfully sold at least some of the stolen data and also used stolen data to commit other frauds, according to the Justice Department.
Wagenius was arrested Dec. 20, 2024, in Texas, according to court documents. He enlisted in June 2022 as a signal support systems specialist and had previously pleaded guilty in a separate case to two counts of unlawful transfer of confidential phone records in connection with this conspiracy.
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