Ransomware Negotiator Pleads Guilty to Aiding BlackCat Attacks in 2023
A third individual who was employed as a ransomware negotiator has pleaded guilty to conducting ransomware attacks against U.S. companies in 2023.
Angelo Martino, 41, of Land O’Lakes, Florida, teamed up with the operators of the BlackCat ransomware starting in April 2023 to assist the e-crime gang in extracting higher amounts as ransoms.
“Working as a negotiator on behalf of five different ransomware victims, Martino provided BlackCat attackers with confidential information about the negotiating position and strategy of his company’s clients without the clients’ or his employer’s knowledge or permission,” the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a Monday announcement.
The information, which included the victims’ insurance policy limits and internal negotiation positions, maximized the ransoms they were required to pay. Martino was financially compensated in exchange for providing the details.
Martino, who was charged last month, also admitted to collaborating with two other incident responders, Ryan Goldberg and Kevin Martin, to successfully deploy BlackCat ransomware against multiple victims in the U.S. between April 2023 and November 2023. Martino and Martin worked for DigitalMint, while Goldberg was an incident response manager for cybersecurity company Sygnia.
In one case, the defendants successfully extorted one victim for approximately $1.2 million in Bitcoin, and then split the illicit proceeds among themselves and laundered the funds through various means. In all, authorities seized $10 million of assets from Martino, including digital currency, vehicles, a food truck, and a luxury fishing boat.
Martino has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to obstruct, delay or affect commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce by extortion. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 9, 2026, and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Martin and Goldberg pleaded guilty to the crime in December 2025 and are expected to be sentenced later this month. Like Martino, both individuals could be awarded a jail term of up to 20 years.
“Angelo Martino’s clients trusted him to respond to ransomware threats and help thwart and remedy them on behalf of victims,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the DoJ’s Criminal Division. “Instead, he betrayed them and began launching ransomware attacks himself by assisting cyber criminals and harming victims, his own employer, and the cyber incident response industry itself.”
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