A Canadian man accused of hacking into American university computer systems and secretly using their supercomputers to mine cryptocurrency appeared in federal court in Rochester, New York, this week after being extradited from Canada. Ryan James Roach was flown to the United States on Oct. 28 and pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from an alleged scheme prosecutors say ran for more than three years.
According to CBC News, prosecutors allege Roach and an accused co-conspirator ran the operation between June 2016 and December 2019, targeting educational institutions in New York, Tennessee, North Carolina and Massachusetts. The FBI's Houston field office amplified news of the case on X, reposting a message from the FBI's Cyber Branch
that described the extradition as tied to an alleged computer hacking and cryptocurrency mining scheme aimed at American universities operating supercomputers.
The case centers on one particularly costly intrusion. Court documents reviewed by the same CBC report describe an alleged 2017 breach of a New York state educational institution in which more than 1,900 login credentials were stolen, malware was installed, and the school's supercomputer was allegedly used to mine a cryptocurrency called Electroneum. That breach alone cost the institution roughly $337,000 in damages, per the report.
A Years-Long Pattern of Alleged Intrusions
The Electroneum-mining breach wasn't an isolated incident, according to prosecutors. Separately, at least 10 protected computers were damaged over the course of a year, causing losses of at least $5,000, as reported by BleepingComputer. Roach is accused of obtaining unauthorized access to university computer systems, deploying malware, stealing credentials and exploiting compromised computing resources to generate cryptocurrency for personal gain, according to the FBI Cyber Branch post shared by FBI Houston.
A federal grand jury indictment charged Roach alongside an alleged co-conspirator, identified in court filings as Mathiew James Stubbings, per the post. Notably, outlets have spelled the co-defendant's first name differently: the U.S. Department of Justice's Western District of New York office and CBC render it Mathiew, while RochesterFirst spells it Matthiew James Stubbings.
Court Appearance and Ongoing Extradition
Roach's Nov. 3 federal court appearance in Rochester did not produce the detention hearing that had been expected. The hearing was postponed after Roach told the court he was not prepared and requested a later date, according to CBC's reporting. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges he faces, per the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York.
Stubbings has not yet joined Roach in the United States. His extradition proceedings remain ongoing in Canada, CBC reported. The DOJ's Office of International Affairs provided assistance in securing Roach's arrest and extradition, and FBI Buffalo investigated the case, according to the FBI Cyber Branch post.
The allegations against both men have not been proven in court, and the full scope of any cryptocurrency mined through the alleged scheme has not been disclosed in the available case materials. Roach's case continues in federal court in Rochester, with a new detention hearing date yet to be set.
