Hacker group member that breached MGM and Caesars arrested

Neha Soni December 6, 2024

SiGMA news

The US authorities have arrested a young man believed to be affiliated with the Scatter Spider hacker group. The Scattered Spider group gained traction when its members breached high profile casino operators in a significant ransomware breach.

As reported by Bloomberg, the authorities in California have detained Remington Ogletree, 19, on charges of wire fraud. He is believed to have helped Scattered Spider with their phishing attempts. The charges were based on the alleged crimes that took place between October 2023 and May 2024, officials said.

While he is not the first teen arrested in relation to the group, his involvement in their activities has not yet been confirmed. The FBI took 17-year-old from Walsall, UK in custody earlier this year on the basis of his alleged involvement in the attacks of MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment.

The group is believed to comprise young but skilled tech specialists, with the alleged head of the MGM breach being only 22 years old. He was arrested in Spain last year.

MGM and Caesars breaches

The Scattered Spider group was behind breaches on several high-profile companies, including two of the largest names in the Las Vegas casino industry, MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment. Both the breaches caused millions of dollars in damages and disrupted the operators’ operations.

Both MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment found themselves embroiled in multiple federal class action lawsuits after experiencing cyberattacks that reportedly compromised customer data. The cyberattacked triggered major outages at MGM hotels and casinos, it had to shut down its online systems for a while to dealt with the problem.

Earlier this year, the group launched a cyberattack on the financial sector, specifically targeting banks and insurance companies.

The latest in a series of such breaches in the gambling industry, International Game Technology (IGT), one of the world’s biggest gaming content developers, disclosed a data breach. The attack involved unauthorised third-party access to its systems last month. The company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about the incident, which led to disruptions in portions of its internal information technology systems and applications.