Joe Schneider
(Bloomberg) — Uber Technologies Inc.’s former chief security officer Joseph Sullivan faces a new wire fraud charges in addition to earlier charges related to covering up a 2016 data breach that compromised the personal information of 57 million drivers and users.
A superseding indictment handed down Wednesday describes how Sullivan allegedly orchestrated the disbursement of a six-figure payment to two hackers in exchange for their silence about the breach, the Justice Department said in a statement.
“We allege Sullivan falsified documents to avoid the obligation to notify victims and hid the severity of a serious data breach from the FTC, all to enrich his company,” Acting U.S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds said in the statement.
David Angeli, Sullivan’s lawyer, rejected the government’s latest allegations.
“There’s nothing new here,” Angeli said in an emailed statement. “The ‘new’ charges are just a recycling of the same meritless allegations against Mr. Sullivan, whose prompt and decisive actions — which were known to Uber’s Legal department and many others at the company — led to the quick identification of the individuals responsible for this incident.”
According to the indictment, Sullivan allegedly attempted to suppress discovery of the breach by having two of the hackers execute non-disclosure agreements. The non-disclosure agreements falsely stated the hackers had neither taken nor stored Uber’s data in the 2016 breach, the government said.
An arraignment on the new charge hasn’t been scheduled yet.
Sullivan, 52, joined Uber in 2015. He started his career as a federal prosecutor in computer hacking and intellectual property law. He was a fixture in Silicon Valley for more than a decade, with stints at PayPal and EBay Inc. before becoming the chief security officer at Facebook in 2008.
Uber has responded to government inquiries about the case, the Justice Department said.
The case is U.S. v. Sullivan, 20-cr-337, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.
(Corrects attribution in fifth paragraph)
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