June 29, 2022

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Uber’s former security chief Joseph Sullivan to face fraud charges for his alleged role in trying to cover up a cyberattack that exposed the personal information of 57 million passengers and drivers.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick rejected Sullivan’s claim that prosecutors failed to adequately assert that he concealed the hacking to ensure Uber drivers would not flee and continue to pay service fees.

The judge also rejected the ex-security chief’s claim that the alleged victims were Uber’s then-chief executive, Travis Kalanick and its general counsel, not drivers.

“Those purported misrepresentations, though not made directly to Uber drivers, were part of a larger scheme to defraud them,” Orrick wrote, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors accused Sullivan of allegedly agreeing to pay $100,000 in Bitcoin to two hackers in exchange for their silence while he tried to hide the cyberattack from passengers, drivers and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.