He continues to claim his innocence. Frenchman Sébastien Raoult pleaded “not guilty” to cybercrimes on Friday in a court in Seattle, in the northwest of the country.
The 21-year-old appeared in person, assisted by a translator, before Federal Judge Michelle Peterson who served the charges against him. A court-appointed lawyer explained that he was pleading “not guilty” at this stage of the proceedings. The prosecution having mentioned a “risk of absconding”, the magistrate decided that he would be kept in detention until the next hearing, scheduled for April 3.
Sébastien Raoult was arrested on May 31 at Rabat airport (Morocco) at the request of American justice. He was extradited on Wednesday by the Moroccan authorities, despite strong protests from his family and his lawyer.
The Frenchman assures his family that he has been the victim of identity theft, his father told Le Parisien in July 2022. “He wants to claim his innocence”, he assured.
Two other French people prosecuted
The young man is being prosecuted by American justice with two other French nationals, Gabriel Bildstein, 23, and Abdel-Hakim El-Ahmadi, 22. They are all accused of having formed the group of hackers “ShinyHunters” and of having, from 2020, stolen confidential data from 60 companies, including some located in the Seattle area, to resell them on the dark web. .
According to various experts, they targeted Microsoft’s account on the computer code sharing platform Github, the Indonesian e-commerce site Tokopedia, the American clothing brand Bonobos or the American telephone operator AT-T. They face nine charges, including criminal association, computer fraud, identity theft, each punishable by penalties ranging from 2 to 27 years in prison.