Bloomberg Takes Witness Stand; Says Hackers Tried to Extort $200G
Mayor Michael Bloomberg came to court yesterday as the outraged CEO, describing an alleged cyber-shakedown by two men from Kazakhstan who demanded money or threatened to expose weaknesses in his multibillion-dollar corporation’s computer system. Although he was on the stand for only about 90 minutes (with just 15 minutes of direct questioning by the government’s prosecutor), Bloomberg was the star witness against defendant Oleg Zezev, 29. The boyish computer technician with a cowlick from Almaty, Kazakhstan, is accused of hacking into Bloomberg, LP computer systems in 2000 and attempting to extort $200,000 from Bloomberg. Defense lawyer Robert Baum has argued that Zezev had uncovered a bug in Bloomberg software and was merely attempting to sell executives his computer acumen. Full Story