“Crafty Cockney,” associate of thedarkoverlord, fighting extradition to the U.S. after being charged with hacking, extorting, U.S. medical entities in 2016

 Posted by at 3:59 pm  Hack, Health Data, Of Note, U.S.
Jan 102019
 

Now THIS is very big news on thedarkoverlord front:

Joseph Curtis reports that Nathan Wyatt, who was jailed on fraud charges in the U.K. but has been released from prison there, is now fighting extradition to the U.S. on charges he was involved with hacking and extorting U.S. medical entities as part of  thedarkoverlord. 

Nathan Wyatt, aka “Crafty Cockney.”  File photo.

This journalist had interviewed Wyatt exclusively prior to his first arrest in September, 2016, on charges relating to the hack and attempted sale of pictures of Pippa Middleton.  Wyatt was not jailed on those charges, however, and this journalist had been told by him that the royal family had intervened so as to avert a court case that might lead to the production of embarrassing photos.  Whether that is true or not, this journalist cannot say as lawyers for Wyatt did not respond to inquiries sent at the time.

But Wyatt had also talked extensively with DataBreaches.net about his relationship with thedarkoverlord, which included, he said, teaching thedarkoverlord fraud techniques, and being asked by TDO to make an extortion phone call to a U.S. victim.  That call (you can hear it here) was recorded and uploaded to YouTube. Wyatt subsequently linked to it in a post on the now-shuttered Alpha Bay dark web marketplace. At times, Wyatt claimed that he never actually made the call and that he just recorded it as a joke because TDO was pressuring him to do it. But if you listen to the recording, you can hear someone else at the beginning answering the phone.

When Wyatt was arrested in 2016 and his devices seized, police found evidence of other crimes, including a hack of an unnamed law firm and an attempt to extort the law firm.  It was on those charges that he was ultimately tried and sentenced to prison for 3 years.

But law enforcement had also – according to Curtis’s reporting –  found evidence that Wyatt had used his own details and live-in partner’s details to set up bank accounts in the U.K. to funnel payments to thedarkoverlord from U.S. medical entities that TDO was attempting to extort at the time.  In a copy/paste error by an associate of Wyatt’s, DataBreaches.net had accidentally been shown the bank account numbers in July 2016.  At that time, however, DataBreaches.net did not know that “Nathan Wyatt” was the bad actor known to her as “Crafty Cockney.”  And the TDO spokesperson at the time talked about Crafty Cockney as a low-level person or associate but not one of the core people in TDO.  The new charges suggest that TDO may have been downplaying Wyatt’s role, and that Wyatt’s claims of tutoring TDO and assisting in other ways may have been more accurate.

So now Wyatt is reportedly fighting extradition to the U.S., it seems.  According to Curtis’s reporting:

He has been charged with one count of conspiracy to blackmail healthcare providers in the USA, two counts of aggravated identity theft and three counts of threatening damage to a protected computer.

[…]

An arrest warrant was issued by the US district of Missouri on November 8th, 2017.

Curtis provides a lot of other details that will sound familiar to those who have followed my reporting on thedarkoverlord since 2016.  The unnamed health records management firm referred to may be Quest Health Information Management Systems. I had reported how they had been hacked by TDO in 2016, which gave TDO login credentials to Quest’s clients, including medical entities in Missouri and Georgia.

The U.S. government likely has a lot of evidence against Wyatt, but for the benefit of readers who may be a bit confused by this new development, I will state here that Wyatt is almost certainly not the person who was the communicator for TDO back in June – July of 2016.  How do I know that? Because I chatted with that individual while Wyatt was still being detained by law enforcement in the U.K. Then too, Wyatt’s writing, which I had ample opportunity to read in extended chats, was nowhere near the level of the individual who ran TDO’s Twitter account back then, who wrote the extortion demands and lengthy letters, and who communicated with journalists.  Law enforcement may not have apprehended that first “TDO” yet.

Will Wyatt appeal to the U.K. to try him there for charges relating to hacking and extorting U.S. entities because he has three children there?  Probably. But there are so many victims and witnesses in the U.S. and I doubt the U.K. will find him a sympathetic figure, even if he has children.  Wyatt does not have the popular support of someone like Lauri Love.

As I frequently have to say when covering all things TDO:  stay tuned.

Note: I do not know whether the law firm that Wyatt was convicted for hacking and extorting is the same law firm involved in the 9/11 files that thedarkoverlord has recently publicized and tried to sell. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was the same law firm, but I have no proof or information either way.

Thedarkoverlord releases more 9/11 files, KickAss Forum seized by law enforcement?

 Posted by at 9:05 pm  Hack, Of Note
Jan 092019
 

Updated: After this post was published, other information became available suggesting that law enforcement may not have taken down KickAss and that the seizure notice placed on that url may have either been placed by KickAss or by some third party or parties. See updates at the bottom of this post. This is obviously a developing story. 🙂 

After a few days in which thedarkoverlord did not appear in public, the criminal hackers reappeared today to release more files from 9/11.

In a post on Steem, that is available on the busy.org frontend, they wrote, in part:

Hello, world. As you’re well-aware, we designed a compensation plan that would allow for the public crowd-funding of our organisation in order to permit the public disclosure of our “9/11 Papers” in the interest of the public. Part of this plan was to create a tiered escalation plan that would result in multiple layers and milestones (which we’re calling checkpoints) to ensure the powers at be are being properly bent over a barrel. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: we’re financially motivated, and you (the public) has spoken to us in our language (internet money, specifically Bitcoin). Remember, continuing to fund our wallet will continue to keep us motivated to help break the truth to the world by open-sourcing what we’re calling the “9/11 Papers”. To create a bit more buzz, we’ve decided to continue forward and release the decryption key for Layer 2.

A quick skim of some Layer 2 files indicates that they contain a lot more of the litigation and subrogation files, but they are also starting to get into some other interesting reports relating to the FBI and CIA investigations.

Those who have followed actor James Wood’s activism and tweets on Twitter will likely be interested in a file that concerns him.  In January, 2002, a memo was created by Todd A. Scharnhorst of Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin that said:

As a clarification to a prior memo, James Woods, a Hollywood actor, was riding in First Class with four men of Middle-Eastern dissent.  He was on an American Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles.  He thought the men were acting very suspiciously.  None of them had anything to eat or drink, they did not read, sleep, nor did they appear to make themselves comfortable.  They sat in their seats and stared straight ahead, occasionally “whispering something to one another with inaudible tones.”  Woods thought the behavior was odd.  He reported it to the flight attendants.  He then reported it to the ground crew. Should this have put American Airlines on notice (should they have at least done some type of investigation into the four Middle-Eastern passengers)?  As it turns out, it appears the four passengers were four of the hijackers who took over that same flight and crashed it into the World Trade Center.  It appears James Woods witnessed a “dry run” of their terrorist takeover.

I need to find time to do more reading in this layer.

In the meantime, and in other news concerning thedarkoverlord, not only did they become the first entity ever banned from Steem (or so they tell me, but I’ve seen others who claimed to have been banned, too), but in a joint law enforcement operation, the Kickass Forum where they were posting their offerings and other information  was appeared to have been seized today (see UPDATES).

The notice says:

THIS HIDDEN SITE HAS BEEN SEIZED

as part of a joint law enforcement operation by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, ICE Homeland Security Investigations,
and European law enforcement agencies acting through Europol and Eurojust
in accordance with the law of European Union member states
and a protective order obtained by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York
in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Computer Crime & intellectual Property Section
issued pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 983(j) by the
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York

So what hack or criminal activity did they allegedly conduct within the Southern District of New York?  Was this a biomedical research firm? Was it Aesthetic Dentistry? Was it some victim that we may not even know about or that I’ve simply forgotten?

As Bits&Digits commented on Twitter, in noting the seizure of the forum:

And like that…. the forum that allegedly ran, is down and out. Now, this criminal organization has to make a choice to cut and run or play the gamble. Never a good sign to have your site seized, so much evidence.

So will they cut and run or will they play the gamble? Mainstream media has not been reporting on them for the most part, Twitter banned them, Steem banned them, and now the forum that was part of their communication strategy was seized.  And the fact that it was seized by order of the Southern District of New York probably means that there is a sealed complaint, too. But all that said, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them.

Update 1:  AnonFiles, a file-sharing service that thedarkoverlord has used to share files from 9/11 and other hacks, is now down.  Nathan Dimoff broke the news about AnonFiles on Twitter, and I just took a screenshot to confirm it:

 

Holy crap, Batman…..  there is some serious efforts afoot to stop thedarkoverlord.  Stay tuned…

Update 2:  This is intriguing. AnonFiles is back up and Vinny Troia is claiming that the KickAss seizure notice is a fake and that KickAss just went private on another url.  Other sources tell me that the seizure notice does NOT appear to be by law enforcement,  but that it may not have been posted by KickAss or TDO, either.

When asked about the current situation and risk to users of visiting either site, J. Tate from bits&digits told me,

“I wouldnt trust anything that the intergrity seems to be compromised in. Whether or not there is evidence to support the claims at this moment. All OPSEC engineers know, that in these situations with a multitude of symptoms —safer is to step back.”

So I won’t be going to AnonFiles any time soon… or that KickAss onion url, I guess.

thedarkoverlord experiments with its approach to amassing BTC

 Posted by at 7:05 am  Commentaries and Analyses, Of Note
Jan 072019
 

I’ve probably reported more on the blackhats known as thedarkoverlord (TDO) than other journalists, and I’ve probably spent more time chatting with them about their work than any other journalist. But despite my considerable investment of time, there are times when I simply do not understand why they are doing what they are doing. As someone who has had decades of professional experience predicting and understanding behavior, I find that when their strategy makes absolutely no sense to me, either their neurology has led them down an unusual path, or I’m failing to appreciate some brilliance on their part.

It might be either. Or both.

So let me use this post to lay out what I’ve observed about TDO’s approach to amassing vast amounts of internet money (as they call it), and how it has been evolving over the past few years.

In the Beginning

When TDO first burst on the scene in June, 2016, it was after they had listed three patient databases with hundreds of thousands of records for sale on The Real Deal marketplace, asking exorbitant amounts of money for them.

It soon became clear that the sale of the patient databases was simply a way to put pressure on their victims, who they had been attempting to extort. By placing such a high price on the data, they got media attention, and with the media attention and reporting, more pressure on their victims.

But did that increased pressure convert to increased payment by the medical clinics? It didn’t appear to. Their early extortion demands, which I was privy to by virtue of having been shown many of their nonpublic email chains with their victims, did not appear immensely successful. From reading their communications, it was clear to me that TDO had done their homework: they had researched their victims and knew the names of the executives and staff, and they had even researched their victims’ families. They had also looked at patient databases closely enough to spot patient names that might belong to celebrities or famous sports figures. [Note: I am referring to TDO as “they” because it appears to be have been than one person over time and even during the same time period.]

So TDO did not appear to be particularly successful in their early attempts to extort the medical sector, even though they appeared to be doing more work researching their victims than the threat actors known as Rex Mundi had done, and even though they were tweeting claims that they had been successful. More than one year later, I would learn that TDO was, indeed, doing better financially than I had imagined, as they showed me some of their wallets from 2016 and signed messages to me from the wallets.

But back in the summer of 2016, TDO was not happy, to say the least. I cannot get into any details, but it almost appeared to be an obsessive battle of wills — that the victims HAD to pay or TDO would make them suffer.

As brilliant intellectually as TDO seemed to be (and yes, I do think the person I was dealing with is intellectually gifted), TDO didn’t seem to really grasp how to get people to do what they wanted them to do. Doctors really do care about trying to protect patient data. Threats or reminders of the consequences of breaches aren’t really necessary or even helpful. TDO’s strategy was to increase the pressure on victims by a parade of horribles, but the victims didn’t need the parade of horribles or more motivation. As psychologist Ross Greene has famously said, “Motivation makes the possible more possible. It does not make the impossible possible.” TDO’s victims were already motivated to protect patient data, but TDO did not seem to fully recognize what was needed or helpful to convert that motivation to payment. And they couldn’t always seem to recognize situations in which they were just never going to get paid – even when doctors told them to go “F…” themselves.

So there was TDO in 2016, setting ridiculously high amounts for extortion payments or for sale of databases. They didn’t care about the patients or what would happen to the patients. They cared only about getting money. Nothing else. And they didn’t seem to fully appreciate how to negotiate with healthcare professionals about protected health information. Perhaps they thought that they figured it out the following year when they began offering victims contracts that included three different payment options, but even that missed the boat.

But let me digress for one minute, because to this day, people still don’t seem to understand one thing about TDO that TDO has always been extremely clear about and consistent about: they do not care about the human emotions or anguish people might feel. They only care about how to exploit human emotions if it gets them more money.

From my perspective, one of the strangest – and most instructive – breaches of theirs was the  Little Red Door Cancer Services of East Central Indiana hack. To this day, I’m still not totally confident that I understand what happened there because the center’s statements and TDO’s statements about “ransomware” and servers being wiped were quite different, but what really puzzled me was that they attacked a little not-for-profit. Why? This NFP had almost no money at all. Why not go after a victim that has the means to pay more? I understood that they didn’t care about the humanitarian effort, cancer, etc. But if they cared about money, why waste time on this little NFP?

So that particular attack made no sense to me, and I don’t like it when things don’t make sense. By the end of 2017, though, they had also attacked a number of school districts, again leaving me wondering … why? Why attack a public school district that almost certainly will not have a lot of resources or a hefty cyberinsurance policy? Why not just go after the real commercially viable firms that are raking in tons of money? Was this really just about getting internet money or was some part of it also the challenge of seeing if they could get their victims to pay them something – anything – just to feel that they have “won” somehow or bested their adversary?

And why continue to use a hack and extort approach instead of just deploying ransomware which might produce faster results?

What was TDO thinking about these questions, and why? I wish I could have gotten them or even still get them to explain their rationale to me, but alas, they have always declined to discuss these things.

Since 2016, TDO has been attacking victims from all sectors, and attempting to extort them all, although sometimes, they don’t get around to attempting extortion until months or a year after they have hacked and exfiltrated data. And at times, they seem to be attempting to extort the wrong entity, as I recently noted in discussing their erroneous claims about National Life Group, although they might try to argue that a deep pockets entity is the right entity to extort even if it wasn’t their servers that were attacked. And if that really is their intention – and not just a coverup for attempting to extort the wrong entity – then that, too, is a change in their methods to note. But what could your firm do with the knowledge that TDO might attempt to extort your firm even if you weren’t the entity they hacked? Are there situations in which non-hacked entities might agree to pay?

NOW What Are They Doing?!

With their recent return to public visibility to try to make money from 9/11 files via both extortion and crowdfunding, TDO seems to be experimenting yet again. Perhaps starting with a page from the Shadow Brokers, TDO may have come up with a winning strategy: demand payment from your victims to return or delete data so that it never sees the light of day, while at the same time asking the public to crowdfund payment to you so that you will make the files public. They can get paid either way.

This strategy really may be a game-changer in terms of extortion attempts going forward if the data or files are sufficiently of interest to the public. In this case, TDO has already tested the water by mentioning that they have files on UFOs. Well, how can that not be a winner, right?

And in a second test of the “pay us not to release the data” and “pay us to show you the data,” TDO is also currently putting pressure on victims of the London Bridge Plastic Surgery hack disclosed in 2017, but now they are attempting to extort the patients themselves. [Note: DataBreaches.net decided not to report on that hack at the time because the data were unusually sensitive, including pictures of genitalia and identifiable patient data and psychological reports.] Having failed to obtain the payment they sought from the surgery itself in 2017, TDO now appears to be trying to extort the patients directly. That, experiment, too, may lead to more extortion of individuals down the road if the London Bridge Plastic Surgery patients pay their demands. And if the patients don’t pay up, well the public may pay to see nude celebrities. Either way, TDO would get some money.

The London Bridge Plastic Surgery-related extortion also highlights another aspect of TDO’s methods: they don’t just extort and pack it in. They go back to the victims and try and try again, even more than one year later. So maybe victims who breathe a sigh of relief when TDO stops contacting them shouldn’t feel relieved. They may come back and try again, or they may reach out to your patients or clients at a later date.

Of concern, while all this is going on right now — while TDO is trying to make money from the 9/11 files they claim they have while at the same time trying to extort National Life Group, patients of London Bridge Plastic Surgery, and likely Advantage Life, and FRS — there are still many more other hacking victims of theirs who are in the process of being extorted or who will receive extortion demands at some point.

And what TDO learns now from its newest experiments may impact what happens to all of their other hacking victims that haven’t been disclosed yet. Some of them are likely small medical practices. Some are public schools. And there’s no point in asking TDO to show them any mercy because they just don’t care. The blackhats that revel in being called cyber-enabled terrorists are still developing their approach and their image doesn’t include being compassionate. It only includes being profitable.

So those of you who have been cheering TDO on for leaking the 9/11 files or because you want the UFO files or to see nude celebrities, remember that you cheered them on when they threaten to expose really sensitive information about you or your family.

Exclusive: National Life Group denies claim by thedarkoverlord that they were hacked; independent insurance agency appears to be the actual victim

 Posted by at 11:06 am  Breach Incidents, Business Sector, Hack, Health Data, Of Note, Subcontractor, U.S.
Jan 042019
 

Hackers claimed to have hacked hundreds of thousands of records from National Life Group, but investigation points to Sterling National Financial Group as the likely hacked entity

The blackhat hacker/extortionist(s) known as thedarkoverlord (TDO) ended 2018 and welcomed 2019 with a number of bold announcements about large hacks. One of those announcements was their claim in a since-removed paste that they had hacked National Life Group (NLG) and exfiltrated more than 500,000 records from their servers:

We breached National Life Group and stole over 500.000 records from their servers. They rejected our most handsome business proposition so we’re leaking a few sample documents now with more to come soon.

–
National Life Group

The hackers’ claims are disputed by NLG on a few important points. Until DataBreaches.net called NLG, they reportedly had no idea that anyone was claiming that that they had been hacked and they were not aware that anyone was trying to extort them over a hack they knew nothing about. When contacted by DataBreaches.net, their initial response could be summarized as, “What hack? What extortion attempt? We have no idea what you’re talking about.” But to understand how we got to that point, we need to back up a few weeks.

A few weeks before their public claims, TDO had contacted DataBreaches.net and provided a sample of files that they claimed were from a hack of NLG. The files that DataBreaches.net received at that time are the same files that TDO recently made publicly available in a data dump that DataBreaches.net will not link to.

On December 21, after a preliminary examination of the files, this journalist contacted NLG and spoke with Ross Sneyd about TDO’s claims. Sneyd denied ever having had any email communication from TDO, despite TDO insisting that they had made contact with him previously. He also denied any knowledge of any hack. I verbally provided him with some data — the names of policyholders whose names appeared in the files I had and the names and affiliations of the insurance agents who completed the applications. Sneyd informed me that they would immediately investigate the claims.

Suiting action to their word, one of the things NLG immediately did was to contact FireEye’s Mandiant division for assistance in their investigation.

While they pursued their investigation, this site kept digging into the files it had received, becoming less and less certain that there had been any hack of NLG. Although the files were applications for NLG policies and products, the files and the metadata all appeared to point to Texas-based Sterling National Financial Group, a firm that provides retirement and financial planning services to employees in the public marketplace.

Sterling National Financial Group

When asked to provide DataBreaches.net with more data that would prove that it was NLG that had been hacked and not Sterling NFG, thedarkoverlord declined to provide more materials.

Sample Data

Many of the files in the small sample this site received were confirmations that individuals had successfully applied for an insurance product. The files contained a wealth of personal and financial information such as name, postal and email address, telephone numbers (landline and cell), date of birth, Social Security number, driver’s license number (in some cases), country of birth, name of beneficiaries and their dates of birth, the applicant’s employer and job title, and bank account information including Bank name, routing number, and full account number.

Note: Although TDO subsequently released theses same files to the general public unredacted, DataBreaches is redacting the files to protect the personally identifiable information.

One of the files provided to DataBreaches.net by thedarkoverlord. Redacted by DataBreaches.net
Some files contained employment information as well as banking details such as bank name, account number, and routing number, all in plain text. Redacted by DataBreaches.net

For some applicants, the files would include health information on the applicant and their minor child if they had a policy that called for term coverage:

Health history form, as completed by one applicant (redacted by DataBreaches.net)
If a Child Term Rider was sought, the company inquired about neurological disorders or diagnoses that the child might have, as well as heart, lung, or cancer-related problems. DataBreaches.net does not know how many forms with this Part E completed are now in the hackers’ hands.

National Life Group and Sterling NFG Respond

Late yesterday, DataBreaches.net received statements from both National Life Group and Sterling National Financial Group. National Life Group’s statement, below, appears to confirm what DataBreaches.net had suggested: that it wasn’t their hack:

When we learned of this incident on Dec. 21 we began working with Mandiant, a leading independent digital forensics firm. Mandiant’s initial findings are that there is no evidence of a breach at National Life and this incident likely originated with an independent insurance agency. Mandiant’s work is ongoing.
 
We understand the independent agency, which works with multiple insurance carriers, is now or will shortly be notifying the affected individuals.
 
We are also working with law enforcement.

Sterling NFG’s statement to DataBreaches.net, below, seems to acknowledge that they are responsible for notifying customers of a breach, although we might wish that their statement was a bit clearer:

Sterling is aware of this incident. We are working with third party professionals to investigate the situation as well as working diligently to send notification letters to affected customers who will be eligible for credit monitoring services at no cost to them. Due to the current investigation we are unable to provide further comment.

Sterling NFG declined to provide additional details so DataBreaches.net.

DataBreaches.net asked thedarkoverlord to respond to NFG’s denial that they were hacked. The hackers responded:

The insurance policies of the affected materials are held by National Life Group. This makes National Life Group the parent and holds responsibility over the security of the policyholders, who will now have their sensitive PII sold in droves on the dark web, due to NLG’s refusal to accept our most handsome business proposition.

Who’s the Target of the “Handsome Proposition” ????

TDO declined to comment further in response to additional questions posed by this site. Their response — attempting to justify NLG paying their “handsome proposition” instead of Sterling NFG — was a bit surprising, but seems somewhat consistent with other recent statements they have made where they have attempted to hold large insurers with deep pockets such as Hicsox and Lloyd’s of London responsible for a breach that the former firm claims was actually at a law firm that had done some work for them.

If this is TDO’s newer business model or approach, it doesn’t make much sense to me. Yes, I can see claiming that National Life might potentially take a reputation hit because it is their policyholders whose data was stolen, and I can see someone making an argument that National Life’s duty to its policyholders should extend to them ensuring that independent insurance agents who collect information destined for them should have adequate data security, but why would National Life’s insurer reimburse them if they were to pay any “handsome proposition” or extortion demand? If TDO is motivated solely by “internet money” as they repeatedly claim, why go after a firm that won’t get reimbursed for paying their request? Wouldn’t they stand a better chance with a firm that has insurance coverage for a hack?

And yes, I readily admit that I have no business acumen. Thedarkoverlord gives a lot of thought to their methods and business model. Maybe they are on to something that I just fail to recognize or appreciate. Then again, maybe they’re just extorting up the wrong tree, so to speak?

At some point, we will hopefully get some clarification and additional details on this breach. For now, I have no proof as to how many records were actually stolen. Nor do I know if all of the records pertained to NLG policyholders (unlikely if the hack was of Sterling), or if a hack of Sterling’s servers also compromised data of policyholders of other insurers. The latter possibility seems much more likely.

For now, though, it’s important to emphasize that just because thedarkoverlord claims they hacked an entity, they may not have hacked that entity at all and journalists will need to be especially cautious about repeating any claims that contain attributions.

From thedarkoverlord 9/11 files… a glimpse into what your life is worth. (updated)

 Posted by at 12:47 pm  Business Sector, Commentaries and Analyses, Hack, Of Note
Jan 012019
 

The events of 9/11 and theories about those events have occupied a prominent place in our culture. As someone who was there in the aftermath, as a rescuer with the Red Cross, I have enduring memories of what is was like to be just north of Ground Zero in eery silence, and to see the faces of dozens of widows of FDNY firefighters who had given their lives to save others. A few weeks later, as I walked through New York City with my daughter, still in stunned silence, we walked past all the “Have You Seen” posters that were still up. By then, we knew that those posters would never result in joyous reunions, but no one had the heart to take the posters down.

I realize that thedarkoverlord does not care about any of the above. They are only interested in getting lots and lots of internet money, as they have repeatedly informed me and the public over the past 2+ years. But it matters to me. And so one of the documents that they provided from their cache of hacked documents about 9/11 just stopped me cold, because it reminded me how uncaring aspects of the settlement and subrogation litigation could be.

In a confidential letter to Condon & Forsyth, LLP, who were the attorneys for Flight 11 defendants, Kreindler & Kreindler (attorneys for plaintiffs), discuss documentation that they will provide for the wrongful death/personal injury case. That documentation, as outlined in their March 14, 2005 letter, would include:

    Income tax returns (at least 3 years);
    birth certificates of decedents, survivors, and heirs;
    marriage certificates;
    death certificates;
    decedent’s education certificates and degrees;
    employer provided benefits (including fringe benefits) documentation;
    pension plan documentation;
    medical examiner reports;
    personal health/medical documentation;
    divorce degrees; if any

I don’t know how much other documentation was to also be provided, as I only have the first page of the correspondence, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more document types listed on the next page of that letter, too.

So this is how the worth of our lives is to be calculated in the event of a wrongful death or personal injury case? Not by whether we’ve done good in the world or had hopes and dreams that will never be realized, or we have left behind shattered families. But by a list of data types that bean-counters and lawyers can agree upon?

I wonder how the families of the 9/11 victims feel seeing these types of cold negotiations for settlement. It must have been brutal for them if they knew.

As I said yesterday, thedarkoverlord’s cache of documents related to 9/11 will probably show us some of the underside of subrogation litigation and government investigations that we would not otherwise see. History buffs may welcome the release while the companies involved may shudder.

Update of January 3: Thedarkoverlord released more files last night, and the full document from Kreindler & Kreindler was included in that batch. As I had commented, there could be more types of data in their list, and there was: Page 2 of the document listed three other types of information on the dead or injured:

    documentation or narrative details concerning lost household services and other extraordinary circumstances;
    any other materials or information counsel may want you to consider to fairly evaluate their case including the identity of the persons who are entitled to share any award, settlement, or verdict; and<
    with respect to “ground victims”, the best estimate of their location oat the time of death.

And of course, all materials were to be kept strictly confidential. But were they, or years later, did they wind up in the hands of thedarkoverlord? So far, I have not seen any sensitive victim records in the materials that the hackers have released, but they have a lot more in their possession.

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