Former US soldier sentenced to 70 months for telecom extortion

Former US Army soldier Cameron Wagenius, 22, received 70 months and $294,978 restitution for telecom hacking and attempted extortion.

Former U.S. Army soldier Cameron John Wagenius, 22, was sentenced to 70 months in prison and ordered to pay $294,978 in restitution, according to reports citing a September 25 Justice Department announcement. While on active duty from April 2023 through December 2024—including postings in South Korea and at Fort Cavazos in Texas—he and accomplices, described in one report as operating as kiberphant0m, used a tool called SSH Brute and stolen credentials to breach at least 10 organizations, take sensitive telecom and customer records, sell or advertise data, and seek at least $1 million. The scheme exposed a U.S. government official’s call records; The Register also reports hundreds of thousands of customer records stolen and SIM-swapping fraud. Sources link the case to the 2024 Snowflake extortion campaign and name AT&T, but they differ on whether Verizon and T-Mobile were Wagenius’s targets or those of named co-conspirators, and on scale—The Record says more than 100 Snowflake customers. SecurityWeek says he pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and extortion and names Connor Riley Moucka and John Erin Binns among conspirators, while The Record lists wire fraud, extortion, and aggravated identity theft and says he tried to sell stolen information to a foreign military intelligence service.