The US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Thursday that two cybersecurity experts will each be sentenced to four years in prison for facilitating the 2023 BlackCat ransomware attack.
Ryan Goldberg, 40, of Georgia, and Kevin Martin, 36, of Texas, are accused of deploying ransomware to multiple victims across the United States between April and December 2023. Both men, who pleaded guilty in December 2025, conspired with Angelo Martino, 41, of Florida, to carry out the attack.
“The three agreed to pay ALPHV BlackCat administrators 20% of the ransom money they received in exchange for the ransomware and access to the ALPHV/BlackCat extortion platform,” the Justice Department said.
“All three worked in the cybersecurity industry, meaning they had special skills and experience in protecting computer systems from harm, including the type of harm they themselves perpetrated against the victims in this case.”
In one case, the defendants allegedly succeeded in extorting approximately $1.2 million in Bitcoin from a victim, splitting an 80% share in three ways, and then laundering the money to cover their tracks.
Although BlackCat’s ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) scheme no longer exists, the group is estimated to have targeted the computer networks of more than 1,000 victims worldwide.
The incident comes a week after Martino pleaded guilty to the same charges, and is expected to be sentenced in July 2026. Additionally, Mr. Martino allegedly abused his role as a negotiator to extract higher payouts from victims by sharing confidential information about insurance policy limits with BlackCat operators.
Martino and Martin worked at DigitalMint, and Goldberg was hired as an incident response manager at cybersecurity firm Sygnia.
“These defendants misused their professional cybersecurity knowledge not to protect their victims, but to blackmail them,” said Jason A. Redding Quiñones, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. “They used ransomware to lock down critical systems, steal sensitive data, and pressure U.S. companies to pay to regain access to their information.”
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