Albert Gonzalez

Albert Gonzalez
Photo of Albert Gonzalez by U.S. Secret Service
Born	1981 (age 35–36) Cuba
Criminal penalty	20 years federal prison
Criminal status	serving sentence

Albert Gonzalez (born 1981) is an American computer hacker and computer criminal who is accused of masterminding the combined credit card theft and subsequent reselling of more than 170 million card and ATM numbers from 2005 through 2007—the biggest such fraud in history. Gonzalez and his accomplices used SQL injection to deploy backdoors on several corporate systems in order to launch packet sniffing (specifically, ARP Spoofing) attacks which allowed him to steal computer data from internal corporate networks.

During his spree he was said to have thrown himself a $75,000 birthday party and complained about having to count $340,000 by hand after his currency-counting machine broke. Gonzalez stayed at lavish hotels but his formal homes were modest.

Gonzalez had three federal indictments:

On March 25, 2010, Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

Gonzalez along with his crew were featured on the 5th season episode of the CNBC series American Greed titled: Episode 40: Hackers: Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin’.

Gonzalez's parents, who had immigrated to the United States from Cuba in the 1970s, bought him his first computer when he was 8.

He attended South Miami High School in Miami, Florida, where he was described as the "troubled" pack leader of computer nerds. In 2000 he moved to New York City where he lived for three months before moving to Kearny, New Jersey.