Marcel Lehel Lazar, a prolific computer hacker known as “Guccifer,” has been extradited to the United States to finish serving a prison sentence related to a cybercrime spree credited with exposing Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email account while secretary of state, outlets in his native Romania reported Monday.
Romania’s Alba Iulia Court of Appeals said that Lazar has been sent to the U.S. at the request of Interpol to finish serving a prison sentence handed down in 2016, regional outlets including Digi 24 reported.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Lazar had been serving time in Romania on unrelated hacking charges when he was previously extradited to the U.S. in April 2016 in connection with a criminal indictment issued by federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia. He pleaded guilty to counts of hacking and identity theft and was ordered to spend 52-month behind bars, but he was promptly returned home to finish serving the remainder of the Romanian sentence first.
The hacker was freed on parole by a Romanian court late last month, and regional outlets reported afterward that his extradition to the U.S. was imminent.
Lazar’s victims are redacted in federal court filings, but he publicly boasted of hacking email accounts belonging to high-profile targets including Sidney Blumenthal, a former adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, among others.
The hacker selectively leaked Mr. Blumenthal’s emails after breaching his account in 2013, including messages that first exposed Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email address while secretary of state under former President Barack Obama. Subsequent investigations into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices revealed that she had sent classified information to Mr. Blumenthal, and that she had routinely used a personal, privately-maintained email server for government business, providing ample fodder for critics of her unsuccessful 2016 Democratic presidential campaign, including President Trump.
Lazar hacked over 100 victims in the U.S. abroad, according to the Justice Department, and he has previously been linked to breaching accounts belonging to former Secretary of State Colin Powell and a sister of former President George W. Bush, among others.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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