The 20-year-old member of the infamous cybercrime gang known as the scattered spiders has been sentenced to 10 years in the United States in connection with a string of major hacks and cryptocurrency thefts.
Noah Michael Urban pleaded guilty in April 2025 to charges relating to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. News of the Urban ruling was reported by Bloomberg and Jacksonville news outlet News4Jax.
Additionally, in 120 months in federal prison, Urban faces another three years of supervised release, and is ordered to pay the victim $13 million in reparations. In a statement shared with security journalist Brian Krebs, Urban called the sentence an unfair sentence.
Urban, who also went to the alias, Sosa, Elijah, Bob, Gustaboffling and Anthony Ramirez, was arrested in January 2024 by US authorities in Florida for committing wire fraud and aggravated identity theft between August 2022 and March 2023.
Prosecutors said Urban and his co-conspirators exchanged attacks with SIM, hijacking the victim’s cryptocurrency accounts and looting digital assets.
That later in November, the DOJ targeted unsealed criminal charges against urban areas and social engineering technology to target US corporate employees, breaking into corporate networks, stealing their own data and siphoning millions of dollars with cryptocurrency.
Tyler Robert Buchanan, one of those indicted in April after being arrested in European countries last June, was handed over from Spain to the US in April.
This development is because scattered spiders joined forces with other threat groups Shinyhunters and Lapsus $ to form a new cybercrime alliance. A group associated with a broader English-speaking cybercrime group called COM has a history of social engineering, qualification theft, SIM swapping, initial access, ransomware deployment, data theft, and terror attacks.
“Scattered spiders have historically created urgency, attracted media and industry attention, caused fear of exposure, and relied on tactics to force victims to pay quickly,” Adam Dalla, Vice President of Intelligence at Zero Fox, said in a statement.
“The leaks of timing, countdown threats, and provocations directed at security companies are all part of the playbook. They give access to more tools, data and infrastructure, increase effectiveness, and are linked to a network of more aspirational actors. Multipurpose, potentially dangerous combined operations.”
cybersecurity company Flashpoint, which published a profile of the scattered spider last week, said that economically motivated hacking groups are taking a wave-like approach by selecting a specific sector and attacking many of their vertical organizations over a short period of time.
“The tactics employed by scattered spiders demonstrate their ability to leverage the weaknesses of security programs by targeting people rather than strictly system or technical vulnerabilities,” he said. “Their use of social engineering proves that even the most advanced technical defenses can be avoided by human deception through vising, smishing and MFA fatigue attacks.”
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