US Charges Three Iranians for Ransomware Attacks on Women’s Shelter, Businesses

A silhouetted Iranian woman walks past an anti-US wall painting on the wall of former US embassy in the capital city of Tehran, Iran, 05 September 2022. (EPA)
A silhouetted Iranian woman walks past an anti-US wall painting on the wall of former US embassy in the capital city of Tehran, Iran, 05 September 2022. (EPA)
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US Charges Three Iranians for Ransomware Attacks on Women’s Shelter, Businesses

A silhouetted Iranian woman walks past an anti-US wall painting on the wall of former US embassy in the capital city of Tehran, Iran, 05 September 2022. (EPA)
A silhouetted Iranian woman walks past an anti-US wall painting on the wall of former US embassy in the capital city of Tehran, Iran, 05 September 2022. (EPA)

Three Iranians have been charged with trying to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from organizations in the United States, Europe, Iran and Israel, including a domestic violence shelter, by hacking in to their computer systems, US officials said on Wednesday.

Other targets included local US governments, regional utilities in Mississippi and Indiana, accounting firms and a state lawyers' association, according to charges filed by the US Justice Department.

While the criminal charges do not say whether the alleged hackers worked for the Iranian government, a separate US Treasury Department statement said they were affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, an Iranian intelligence and security force.

A senior Justice Department official said the Iran government does not discourage residents from engaging in hacking, as long as it is directed outside the country.

Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The defendants, named Mansour Ahmadi, Ahmad Khatibi and Amir Hossein Nikaein, are citizens of Iran who own or are employed by private technology companies in the country.

The Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on the three Iranians, as well as several other individuals and two organizations they said were part of Tehran's "malicious" cyber and ransomware activity.

The alleged hackers face little chance of being arrested, as they are believed to be living freely in Iran. But officials said the charges will make it difficult for them to travel or find work outside the country, as is the preference of many educated Iranians.

According to the charges, the three men infiltrated the computer systems of a wide range of businesses and governments between October 2020 and August 2022, encrypted their data and demanded bitcoin payments of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Some victims, including the domestic violence shelter, opted to pay the ransom to recover their data.

Such ransomware attacks have skyrocketed over the past decade, damaging scores of US companies and other organizations around the globe.

In June last year, the Justice Department said it was elevating ransomware investigations to a similar priority as terrorism in the wake of a major, disruptive attack on a US pipeline company, which led to localized gas shortages on the US East coast.



Trump Pauses Tariffs on Most Nations for 90 Days, Raises Taxes on Chinese Imports

A crane lifts an imports container from the cargo ship Epaminondas while it is docked at the Port of Baltimore, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Baltimore. (AP)
A crane lifts an imports container from the cargo ship Epaminondas while it is docked at the Port of Baltimore, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Baltimore. (AP)
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Trump Pauses Tariffs on Most Nations for 90 Days, Raises Taxes on Chinese Imports

A crane lifts an imports container from the cargo ship Epaminondas while it is docked at the Port of Baltimore, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Baltimore. (AP)
A crane lifts an imports container from the cargo ship Epaminondas while it is docked at the Port of Baltimore, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Baltimore. (AP)

Facing a global market meltdown, President Donald Trump on Wednesday abruptly backed down on his tariffs on most nations for 90 days, but raised the tax rate on Chinese imports to 125%.

It was seemingly an attempt to narrow what had been an unprecedented trade war between the US and most of the world to a showdown between the US and China. The S&P 500 stock index jumped nearly 7% after the announcement, but the precise details of Trump's plans to ease tariffs on non-China trade partners were not immediately clear.

Trump posted on Truth Social that because "more than 75 Countries" had reached out to the US government for trade talks and have not retaliated in meaningful way "I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately."

The 10% tariff was the baseline rate for most nations that went into effect on Saturday. It's meaningfully lower than the 20% tariff that Trump had set for goods from the European Union, 24% on imports from Japan and 25% on products from South Korea. Still, 10% would represent an increase in the tariffs previously charged by the US government.

The announcement came after the global economy appeared to be in open rebellion against Trump's tariffs as they took effect Wednesday, a signal that the US president was not immune from market pressures.

Business executives were warning of a potential recession caused by his policies, some of the top US trading partners are retaliating with their own import taxes and the stock market is quivering after days of decline.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the walk back was part of some grand negotiating strategy by Trump.

"President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself," she said, adding that the news media "clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here. You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved closer to China, when in fact, we’ve seen the opposite effect the entire world is calling the United States of America, not China, because they need our markets."

But market pressures had been building for weeks ahead of Trump's move.

Particularly worrisome was that US government debt had lost some of its luster with investors, who usually treat Treasury notes as a safe haven when there's economic turbulence. Government bond prices had been falling, pushing up the interest rate on the 10-year US Treasury note to 4.45%. That rate eased after Trump's reversal.

Gennadiy Goldberg, head of US rates strategy at TD Securities, said before the announcement that markets wanted to see a truce in the trade disputes.

"Markets more broadly, not just the Treasury market, are looking for signs that a trade de-escalation is coming," he said. "Absent any de-escalation, it’s going to be difficult for markets to stabilize."

John Canavan, lead analyst at the consultancy Oxford Economics, noted that while Trump said he changed course due to possible negotiations, he had previously indicated that the tariffs would stay in place.

"There have been very mixed messages on whether there would be negotiations," Canavan said. "Given what's been going on with the markets, he realized the safest thing to do is negotiate and put things on pause."

Presidents often receive undue credit or blame for the state of the US economy as their time in the White House is subject to financial and geopolitical forces beyond their direct control.

But by unilaterally imposing tariffs, Trump is exerting extraordinary influence over the flow of commerce, creating political risks and pulling the market in different directions based on his remarks and social media posts. There still appears to be 25% tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum, with more imports set to be tariffed in the weeks ahead.

On CNBC, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said the administration was being less strategic than it was during Trump's first term. His company had in January projected it would have its best financial year in history, only to scrap its expectations for 2025 due to the economic uncertainty.

"Trying to do it all at the same time has created chaos in terms of being able to make plans," he said, noting that demand for air travel has weakened.

Before Trump's reversal, economic forecasters say his second term has had a series of negative and cascading impacts that could put the country into a downturn.

"Simultaneous shocks to consumer sentiment, corporate confidence, trade, financial markets as well as to prices, new orders and the labor market will tip the economy into recession in the current quarter," said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the consultancy RSM.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has previously said it could take months to strike deals with countries on tariff rates, and the administration has not been clear on whether the baseline 10% tariffs imposed on most countries will stay in place. But in an appearance on "Mornings with Maria," Bessent said the economy would "be back to firing on all cylinders" at a point in the "not too distant future."

He said there has been an "overwhelming" response by "the countries who want to come and sit at the table rather than escalate." Bessent mentioned Japan, South Korea, and India. "I will note that they are all around China. We have Vietnam coming today," he said.

What's not yet known is what Trump does with the rest of his tariff agenda. In a Tuesday night speech, he said taxes on imported drugs would happen soon.