A Sydney man has been sentenced to an 18-month Community Correction Order (CCO) and 100 hours of community service for attempting to take advantage of the Optus data breach last year to blackmail its customers.
The unnamed individual, 19 when arrested in October 2022 and now 20, used the leaked records stolen from the security lapse to orchestrate an SMS-based extortion scheme.
The suspect contacted dozens of victims to threaten that their personal information would be sold to other hackers and “used for fraudulent activity” unless an AU$ 2,000 payment is made to a bank account under their control.
