Sentencing of alleged Yahoo hacker Karim Baratov postponed as the judge grows suspicious of DoJ

Judge to sentence Baratov next month amid claims he was a pawn of Russian intelligence

A federal judge has postponed the case of a man who hacked into thousands of Gmail accounts after becoming concerned with the US Justice Department's request to send him to prison for eight years.

In November 2017, Karim Baratov - who was born in Kazakhstan but holds Canadian citizenship - admitted hacking into more than 11,000 Russian and US email accounts on behalf of Russian security services.

From 2010, the 23-year-old set up a hacking service where he would charge customers $100 to steal people's email passwords. To do this, he used a phishing attack that sent users to a spoof password reset site.

However, by March 2017, US authorities had picked up on Baratov's actions and arrested him on suspicion of identity theft as well as federal conspiracy. He eventually pleaded guilty to these charges.

At the time, Paul Abbate - executive assistant director of the FBI's criminal, cyber, response and services branch - called the case "a prime example of the hybrid cyber threat" faced by the US.

He said Baratov's plea "illustrates how the FBI continues to work relentlessly with our private sector, law enforcement and international partners to identify and hold accountable those who conduct cyber attacks against our nation, no matter who they're working with or where they attempt to hide".

This week, many people assumed that US District Judge Vince Chhabria would pass sentencing on the case. However, he ended up cancelling a hearing after becoming suspicious of the Department of Justice.

Because many of Baratov's clients were linked to Russian intelligence services, the Department reportedly asked for an eight-year prison sentence. One of them was supposedly linked to the Yahoo hacks.

But according to Chhabria, this is a long sentence for such a crime."One concern I have is that the sentence the government is requesting for Mr Baratov relates to the fact that he's been caught up with a co-defendant who apparently was the Yahoo mega hacker," he said.

The judge said that Baratov "did not have any involvement in the conspiracy to conduct the Yahoo mega hack" and that he was not "comfortable with the government's proposed term of custody without getting more information".

Sentencing will reconvene on 29 May.