Madison Man Accused In Sports Betting Hacks Facing Federal Charges

MADISON, WI — An 18-year-old was arrested in New York Thursday morning after a search by police at his Madison home in February linked him to "credential stuffing" attacks that stole around $600,000 from 1,600 sports bettor accounts, federal prosecutors from New York announced Thursday.

Joseph Garrison now faces charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, unauthorized access to a protected computer to further intended fraud, unauthorized access to a protected computer, wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

A criminal complaint against Garrison accused him of selling access to hacked accounts alongside information on how to pull funds from the account. The complaint also accused Garrison of launching an online "attack" with stolen username and password pairs from the dark web to obtain access to accounts. The attack on the betting website had a series of attempts to log into it with a large list of stolen credentials, the U.S. Attorney news release said.

The complaint accused Garrison and others of accessing around 60,000 accounts from the betting website with hundreds of thousands stolen from over 1,500 accounts.

Authorites searched Garrison's Madison home in February and found programs often used for credential stuffing attacks and over 700 individual files used to target certain websites of dozens of corporations, according to the U.S. Attorney news release.

Among the files recovered were messages between Garrison and others about how to hack the betting website, the news release said. In some conversations, Garrison believed law enforcement would not catch up to him and about how he enjoyed credential stuffing attacks, the release said.

“Fraud is fun... ...im addicted to see money in my account... ...im like obsessed with bypassing (expletive),” Garrison said in messages uncovered by law enforcement, according to the criminal complaint.