An English court on Wednesday approved the extradition of an Israeli man charged by New York prosecutors with running a “hacking-for-hire” operation that targeted environmental groups.
Prosecutors say that companies run by the man, Amit Forlit, 57, earned at least $16 million by hacking more than 100 victims and stealing confidential information on behalf of a lobbying firm working for a major oil company.
Lawyers for Mr. Forlit identified the company as ExxonMobil in a January court filing. Exxon has been sued by Democratic attorneys general and other local officials over its role in climate change. The lawsuits claim the company covered up what it knew about climate change for decades to continue selling oil. The lobbying firm was identified in the filing as DCI Group.
An Exxon statement said the company had not been involved in and was not aware of any hacking. “If there was any hacking involved, we condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” the statement said.
A spokesman for DCI, Craig Stevens, said the firm instructs employees and consultants to comply with the law and that no one at DCI had directed or was involved “in any hacking alleged to have occurred a decade ago.”
DCI also said that “radical anti-oil activists and their billionaire donors, many of whom still sleep on beds paid for by their family’s fossil-energy legacy trust funds, peddle conspiracy theories” about the firm.