{"id":235659,"date":"2026-04-21T22:15:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T03:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/former-ransomware-negotiator-pleads-guilty-to-blackcat-attacks"},"modified":"2026-04-21T22:15:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T03:15:43","slug":"former-ransomware-negotiator-pleads-guilty-to-blackcat-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/former-ransomware-negotiator-pleads-guilty-to-blackcat-attacks","title":{"rendered":"Former ransomware negotiator pleads guilty to BlackCat attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/former-ransomware-negotiator-pleads-guilty-to-blackcat-attacks.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>41-year-old Angelo Martino, a former employee of cybersecurity incident response company DigitalMint, has pleaded guilty to targeting U.S. companies in BlackCat (ALPHV) ransomware attacks in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Together with two other Sygnia and DigitalMint ransomware negotiators (33-year-old Ryan Clifford Goldberg and 28-year-old Kevin Tyler Martin), Martino <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bleepingcomputer.com\/news\/security\/us-cybersecurity-experts-indicted-for-blackcat-ransomware-attacks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">was charged<\/a> with conspiracy to interfere with interstate commerce by extortion, interference with interstate commerce by extortion, and intentional damage to protected computers.<\/p>\n<p>Martino was initially identified only as \u201cCo-Conspirator 1\u201d in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bleepingcomputer.com\/news\/security\/us-cybersecurity-experts-indicted-for-blackcat-ransomware-attacks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">an October 2025 indictment<\/a>, but was named in court documents <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bleepingcomputer.com\/news\/security\/us-charges-another-ransomware-negotiator-linked-to-blackcat-attacks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">unsealed in March<\/a>. Martin and Goldberg <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bleepingcomputer.com\/news\/security\/us-cybersecurity-experts-plead-guilty-to-blackcat-alphv-ransomware-attacks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">also pleaded guilty<\/a> to conspiracy to obstruct commerce by extortion and are facing up to 20 years in prison each.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>41-year-old Angelo Martino, a former employee of cybersecurity incident response company DigitalMint, has pleaded guilty to targeting U.S. companies in BlackCat (ALPHV) ransomware attacks in 2023. Together with two other Sygnia and DigitalMint ransomware negotiators (33-year-old Ryan Clifford Goldberg and 28-year-old Kevin Tyler Martin), Martino was charged with conspiracy to interfere with interstate commerce by [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,1493],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode","category-law-enforcement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}