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Saad Echouafni (Computer Intrusion); Los Angeles, California
Topic Started: Aug 1 2010, 10:17 PM (465 Views)
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http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/fugitives/cyber/echouafni_s.htm

COMPUTER INTRUSION

SAAD ECHOUAFNI

Alias: Jay R. Echouafni

DESCRIPTION

Date of Birth Used: June 23, 1967
Place of Birth: Morocco
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 200 LBS.
NCIC: W866352802
Hair: Black
Eyes: Green
Sex: Male
Race: White (North African)
Nationality: Moroccan
Occupation: Unknown
Scars and Marks: Echouafni has a mole on his right cheek.
Remarks: Echouafni speaks English and French and may have fled to Morocco.

CAUTION

Saad Echouafni, head of a satellite communications company, is wanted in Los Angeles, California for allegedly hiring computer hackers to launch attacks against his company's competitors. On August 25, 2004, Echouafni was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles in connection with the first successful investigation of a large-scale distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) used for a commercial purpose in the United States. In a DDOS, a multitude of compromised systems attack a single target causing a sustained denial of service for its customers. The investigation, codenamed Operation Cyberslam, was initiated in 2003 when a large-digital video recorder vendor based in Los Angeles reported a series of crippling denial of service attacks that effectively halted its business for nearly two weeks. That business, as well as others both private and government in the United States, were temporarily disrupted by these attacks which resulted in losses ranging from $200,000 to over $1 million.

SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING THIS PERSON, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL FBI OFFICE OR THE NEAREST AMERICAN EMBASSY OR CONSULATE.
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tatertot
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http://archive.boston.com/news/local/artic...ercrime?pg=full

Sudbury man hunted by FBI for cybercrime
By Matt Viser, Globe Correspondent | December 12, 2004

They must have left in a hurry.

The garden hose lies tangled in the driveway. Plastic toys are tossed haphazardly at the side of the house. The chain-link fence gate to the backyard is wide open.

The family of five left Sudbury at least four months ago -- just before a federal grand jury indicted the father on charges of cybercrime. They left behind a $1 million home in a quiet, wooded neighborhood where addresses are etched into stones and benches are made from tree trunks.

The FBI suspects they went to Morocco.

Jay R. Echouafni allegedly hired five hackers last year to unleash a virtual attack against three business competitors, according to the federal indictment, which was handed up in August by a grand jury in Los Angeles. All told, the attacks caused more than $2 million in damages and temporarily disrupted websites for the Homeland Security Department and Amazon.com, the government alleges.

Echouafni's vanishing act has earned him a spot on one of the FBI's most-wanted lists. It's not the notorious ''10 Most Wanted" list, but rather the ''Crime Alert" list the bureau started five years ago to track down suspects who are less prone toward physical violence. There are 15 others on the list wanted for crimes such as mail fraud, kidnapping, and bombing a building.

The FBI website displays two photos of Echouafni. In one, he wears a black suit with a silk tie, his black hair closely cropped under the soft lighting of a professional photographer. In the other, he wears a white undershirt, staring glumly under the glare of mugshot lighting.

Echouafni, 37, has been described by some as a suave businessman who could charm people into buying whatever he was selling. But other acquaintances describe him as an arrogant entrepreneur who would do anything to make a buck.

''He knew what he wanted to do and he wanted to do it whether you wanted him to do it or not; this wasn't necessarily someone you reasoned with," said Jack Hepting, who, as the building inspector in Sudbury, visited the Echouafni house on several occasions. ''But he certainly wasn't unpleasant. He was nice. Maybe too nice. Like he was looking for favors."

Echouafni (pronounced Esh-waf-nee), who is also known as Saad, was born in Morocco and moved to the United States as a teenager, becoming a citizen. He got his business start in Marlborough, running a disc jockey company called Jr Light & Sound. In the early 1990s, he saw promise in the emerging satellite dish industry. Bruce Cromarty, who helped Echouafni install his first dish, said Echouafni was a quick learner, but also a bit of a playboy, always out to impress.

When the pair attended an industry conference in Baltimore, Echouafni showed up at casual meetings redolent with cologne and decked out in Giorgio Armani suits. He told stories of being a former Los Angeles cop and a gourmet chef -- claims that Cromarty suspected were not true.

Echouafni later printed various business cards, first claiming to be the largest satellite dish dealer in Massachusetts, then the largest in New England, then the largest east of the Mississippi, and, finally, the largest in the universe.

''He was a very colorful, colorful person," said Cromarty, who now owns Northern Satellite Systems in Marlborough. ''He had a European accent and he was very charming. And he was very smart."

Echouafni talked a big game -- ''he could sell ice to an Eskimo," Cromarty said -- and somehow managed to sell satellite dishes for $6,000 when everyone else was selling them for $3,000. But he also had a quick temper and rarely kept employees for longer than a few months, according to several people who saw him on the job. Cromarty said he stopped associating with Echouafni after a business deal soured and Echouafni withheld about $5,000 from him.

Later, Echouafni began buying or starting other companies and dabbling in computer software development. One of his recent ventures involved purchasing FlightTime, a company that charters private flights. He went to the company's bankruptcy auction expecting to purchase a conference table. ''I never expected to walk away planning to launch a brand new business," Echouafni said in a 2002 press release. Echouafni sold the company earlier this year to an employee.

''He had a pretty high image of himself and his ability to make money," said Stephen E. Grande III, the landlord of Echouafni's now-vacant office in Sudbury. ''If you were to walk around Wall Street, there are 250,000 guys just like him. But in a little town like Sudbury, he stuck out a little bit."

Echouafni drove a black Mercedes 600 with tinted windows. He rarely spoke with neighbors, and when he did, it often involved a dispute.

''I've lived on this street for over 20 years, and I could spend five minutes on each person in this neighborhood," said Henry Tischler. ''But him? I really just don't know."

At one point, Echouafni was running his primary business, Orbit Communications, out of his house on Brewster Road. He put cubicles in his living room and added a small gravel parking area across the street. About a dozen employees showed up there on a regular basis, and UPS trucks made frequent visits, according to neighbors' letters to the town.

After the complaints drew the attention of town officials, he moved his fledging business -- which he reported had 30 employees and annual sales of $3.7 million -- into an office building on Union Avenue.

Echouafni also began rewarding himself. He built a home theater in the basement of his Sudbury house, with a movie screen and seats for nearly a dozen viewers. He installed plasma TVs in many of the rooms in the 6,500-square-foot house, according to Grande, who recalled several occasions when he saw the family gathered around one in the kitchen at breakfast. Since buying the house in 1994, he put $60,000 into repairs and additions. He also installed half a dozen satellite dishes outside the house, which features modern architecture that sets it apart from the typical Sudbury two-story Colonial. A wooden deck in the backyard overlooks a small pool with a diving board.

A family history
The entrepreneur's family life has been as complicated as his business dealings. He has been married at least three times and has at least four children.

In 1996, he was in a traffic accident in Stow after he was clocked by police going 90 miles per hour in a 30 m.p.h. zone. The Cadillac DeVille he was driving crashed into a tree and flipped several times, pinning him, his wife, and their 7-month-old daughter in the car.

The couple later divorced, and his ex-wife sued Echouafni for medical treatment she underwent after the accident. The case was settled out of court. His ex-wife, who has remarried and now lives in Holliston, declined to be interviewed. She has custody of their daughter, who is now 9.

In 1997, Echouafni married Imane, who was also from Morocco. Jay and Imane had at least two children: a 6-year-old girl who last year was in kindergarten at Peter Noyes Elementary School; and a 5-year-old boy. Echouafni also has a son who last year was a freshman at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, although it could not be determined if he is Imane's son.

Websites blocked
While some of Echouafni's business dealings were controversial, he had no criminal record.

But that all changed in October 2003. Here is what happened, according to the indictment handed up last summer:

Echouafni launched an electronic attack on weaKnees.com, an online seller of digital video recorders based in Los Angeles. For several weeks, the company's e-mail was knocked out and customers could not access the website, costing the company $200,000, according to federal prosecutors.

The attack followed Echouafni's unsuccessful efforts to make a deal with weaKnees.com to distribute its upgrade kits for digital recorders.

Echouafni allegedly enlisted five people in Arizona, Louisiana, Ohio, and Great Britain to unleash the attacks. The cybermercenaries flooded the websites with data until they crashed. As a result of the attacks, employees' computers were effectively disabled and consumers received error messages when they went to the company's website.

In addition to attacking weaKnees, the hackers also allegedly targeted two other competitors: Rapid Satellite, based in Miami, and the Worcester-based Expert Satellite. Echouafni called Rapid Satellite's owner several times while his server was down and offered to host the site for $5,000 a month. The owner declined.

As a byproduct of the attacks, the websites for Amazon.com and the US Department of Homeland Security, which shared a server with Rapid Satellite, were disabled for about an hour. The total damage from all of the attacks was estimated to be $2 million.

Echouafni is the first person charged with using the Internet to attack a business competitor. The FBI now ranks cybercrime as its third-biggest priority, after terrorism and espionage. His case, which has attracted international media attention, has been significant because it involves a targeted virtual attack, as opposed to spam and nondirected viruses.

Echouafni could not be reached for comment, and his attorney, Martin H. Green of Framingham, did not return phone calls and an e-mail message. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal by phone from an undisclosed location last month, Echouafni denied the federal charges and said that he had been the target of several attacks himself.

When Echouafni was arrested in connection with the case in March, he posted his house as bail. He and his family had to give up their passports, and Echouafni was ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device on his ankle.

In July, a federal judge agreed to return passports to Echouafni's wife and children. At the time of his disappearance, Echouafni was no longer under house arrest but he had not had his own passport returned, according to an FBI spokeswoman in California.

The week before the Democratic National Convention, Echouafni began loading a large metal freight truck with materials from his home. He left before the convention, and neighbors say they have not seen anyone living in the house since. In August the FBI began what it called ''an international manhunt" for Echouafni.

Now, weeds stand tall in his yard. The water in the swimming pool is murky. And on his front door are a half-dozen slips for packages that he may never claim.
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