Manitoban jailed after pleading guilty to thousands of cyberattacks, manufacturing 'ghost guns'

A Manitoba man who pleaded guilty to manufacturing 3D-printed guns and launching thousands of prolonged cyberattacks across Canada and the United States has been sentenced to time in prison.

The man, who was under 18 when he committed the crimes, was sentenced in provincial court in Brandon, Man., on Tuesday after being arrested in March 2022, following a joint investigation by Brandon police and a branch of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. The operation tracked his involvement with a series of distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks.

A DDoS attack sends a wave of web traffic to a targeted organization and overwhelms it, causing it to become unreachable and eventually shut down.

"It is literally designed to overwhelm the system of any company, corporation or technological entity that gets targeted," Crown prosecutor Rich Lonstrup said during Tuesday's sentencing hearing.

The man, who was also charged with making guns using a 3D printer in his apartment, is now 19, but can't be named because he was not an adult at the time of the attacks.

He was sentenced Tuesday to three years for manufacturing and possessing restricted firearms and two years of supervised probation for the cyberattacks, less time already served.

Court was told the man and a second person in Texas conducted cyberattacks for pay between August 2019 and November 2021, under the name Supreme Security Team.

During the sentencing, Lonstrup said the defendant and his accomplice marketed different tiers of attacks, arguing this showed premeditation and sophistication.

"He cannot wash his hands of the conduct of his customers — not when he is putting the weapon in their hands and obviously in some cases seeking to profit from it," Lonstrup said.

There is no way to know how much money the accused made through the attacks, the Crown prosecutor said.

Ghost gun production

When Brandon police became involved in the case, they accessed a list of 97,115 DDoS attacks, including attacks on large corporations, school districts and political targets like the Until Freedom and Black Lives Matter movements, Lonstrup said.

Police were made aware of the DDoS attacks when cryptocurrency business CoinPayments reported attacks on its service to the Vancouver police.

CoinPayments was a customer of Path Protection Services, a company that helps protect companies from DDoS attacks, and Path Protection documented the attacks.

In a bizarre twist, Lonstrup said the accused was actually a customer himself of CoinPayments and Path Protection Services.

"He's all but literally fighting the hand that fed him and protected him," Lonstrup said.

Most alarmingly, the cyberattacks may have been used to help fund the creation of "ghost guns," the Crown prosecutor said — homemade weapons that are so named because they're untraceable.

When the man was arrested, police found a 3D printer actively producing what were believed to be parts for guns. 

"The prospect of guns made from almost scratch is frightening," Lonstrup said. "Whether this was for money or for the thrill of it, it is senselessly and shockingly and callously indifferent to the harms caused."

After the man first pleaded guilty to the charges in November, he was released on bail, with conditions that he not have access to computers or the internet. The Crown said allowing him access to those tools would be like "putting a gun in the hands of a toddler."

The man breached his conditions by being in a home with a computer and internet access and was placed back in custody.

'Misused his intelligence'

During the sentencing, the man, who recently turned 19, cried, apologizing for his actions and their effects on his mom, family and friends, some of whom were present in the courtroom.

Defence lawyer Mike Cook said the man has no prior criminal record.

He has a Grade 10 education, Cook said, but wants to get a Grade 12 education. He has been diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, separation anxiety and Asperger's syndrome, the defence said.

He has been taking medications while in custody and wants to be in a federal penitentiary because of the programs available there that would help with his rehabilitation.

"He has amazing capabilities. He has so much knowledge about computers.... Unfortunately, I guess it's kind of a two-edged sword," Cook said.

"If you're going to do things bad with a computer, he had the ability to do that, and he's accountable for that. He's misused his intelligence." 

Cook said his client been in custody since June 11, 2022, thinking about how he went down the wrong path.

His focus now is on the future, his family and friends, the defence lawyer said.

"He has a lot of support," Cook said. "This is a mom with unwavering support for her son.… It's great to have a mom in the corner."