A U.K. man extradited to the U.S. in December to stand trial for his role in thedarkoverlord (TDO) has agreed to plea guilty to resolve all charges against him.
Nathan Francis Wyatt, also known as “Crafty Cockney,” has agreed to plead guilty to charges stemming from his role in some of thedarkoverlord’s attacks on entities in Missouri and Georgia in 2016. The attacks on medical entities shocked the public because the attackers named and shamed their victims and started dumping patient data if the victims did not pay their extortion demands, which were often in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars. TDO’s tactics also included calling the victim entities or their family members on the phone or sending them aggressive or crude messages.
From the description in court filings, the federal charges against Wyatt stemmed from his alleged roles in attacks against Athens Orthopedic Clinic in Atlanta, Midwest Pain & Spine in Missouri, Prosthetic & Orthotic Care in Missouri, Quest Health Information Management Solutions, and one entity not related to healthcare. None of the victims were named in court filings and the preceding attributions are based on this site’s knowledge of TDO’s attacks and the court’s description of the victims.
On May 20, Wyatt’s trial, which had been scheduled to begin June 15, had been delayed to September 21 due to the pandemic. The court noted that holding the trial in June would endanger the public and make it difficult to assemble a fair cross-section of citizens to serve on the jury.
Yesterday, however, both his counsel and the government filed a joint motion with the court requesting a consolidated plea and sentencing hearing.
Wyatt is represented by a federal public defender, Brocca Morrison. The government is represented by Senior Counsel Laura Kate-Bernstein, Jeffrey B. Jensen, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, and Gwendolyn E. Carroll of the Eastern District of Missouri.
As detailed in previous coverage on this site, Wyatt had been charged with:
- One count of conspiracy against the U.S. (18 USC 371 )
- Two counts of aggravated identity theft (18 USC 1028); and
- Three counts of threatening damage to a protected computer (18 USC 1030)
He was not charged with actual hacking.
The agreed-upon but not yet disclosed guilty plea comes as no surprise because the amount of evidence the prosecution had amassed was somewhat staggering. That said, this site and blogger have disputed any claim that Wyatt was ever the leader of thedarkoverlord in 2016 or 2017, but it was clear from my interviews and chats with him that he had been involved in assisting or conspiring with one other person in a number of ways.
The plea and sentencing hearing will not take place for at least 90 days.
Wyatt is the first person to have been publicly identified as arrested and charged for participation in TDO crimes. He had claimed in the past to know the real identity of the young person that he referred to as “Dark” but that claim may have been part of a scam that he was trying to run. Wyatt reportedly later told someone else that he didn’t know the other’s real identity.