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COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- The talking is over and now the real work toward kickoff begins. A little more than a week after Ohio State coaches and select players took the stage in Chicago for Big Ten media days, the team took to the practice fields for the first time on Thursday morning, opening up [...]

WHITEHALL, Ohio (WCMH) -- Whitehall City Council will hold a special meeting next week to interview candidates for the city's next treasurer. Trevel Balser resigned from the role in late June after four months on the job. On Thursday, Whitehall City Council announced it will hold a special meeting Tuesday to interview candidates for Balser's [...]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Summer break is winding down for students across central and southeastern Ohio. Find your district's first day of school in the list below. See coverage of back-to-school traditions in the video player above. When school starts in Athens County When school starts in Coshocton County When school starts in Crawford County [...]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – A recently introduced Ohio bill inspired by alleged criminal activity at a Powell business aims to increase oversight of massage parlors in an effort to combat human trafficking.  On July 16, Republican lawmaker Brian Lorenz introduced House Bill 978, which would create regulations for massage parlors and enhance penalties for businesses [...]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Calls for Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) to resign are intensifying, with Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) and a number of conservative leaders asking Miller to step down. "I believe Max would be making the right decision to step aside as a candidate and resign from Congress to focus on what is in [...]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Time is running out for Columbus families to get on board a new initiative helping young girls become involved in sports. Called Grow Her Game, the program specifically supports girls 4 to 7 years old and introduces them to soccer. City leaders want Columbus to become the capital of women’s sports. [...]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Ohio’s annual sales tax holiday begins Friday, but shoppers should expect fewer items to qualify compared with the expanded holiday offered in recent years. The holiday runs Aug. 7 through Aug. 9. During that time, shoppers will not pay sales tax on clothing priced at $75 or less and school supplies [...]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Several central Ohio law enforcement agencies and prosecutors are teaming up to crack down on organized retail crimes, which leaders say cost Ohio businesses up to $3 billion each year. Leaders announced the Fraud & Organized Retail Crime Engagement (FORCE) task force on Thursday. The task force is meant to target [...]

PRAIRIE TOWNSHIP, Ohio (WCMH) -- One person is dead after a crash in the southwest part of Franklin County Thursday afternoon. The Franklin County Sheriff's Office said the crash happened on the 6300 block of Alkire Road in Prairie Township just after 3:30 p.m. According to the sheriff's office, the crash happened when a 2017 [...]

UPPER ARLINGTON, Ohio (WCMH) — A central Ohio bakery is helping a Dayton-area business in its legal battle against travel center chain Buc-ee's. Buc-ee's has filed a trademark lawsuit against Beaver's Mini Mart in Beavercreek. Buc-ee's claims the mart's logo is too similar to theirs. The Original Goodie Shop in Upper Arlington has started selling [...]

CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio (WCMH) -- A proposed housing development in Pickaway County has been causing uproar from nearby residents. “This development goes right across the street from me,” Circleville resident Ashley Willison said. “It’s going to affect our infrastructure, our roads.” A 300-acre housing project with over 1,200 units is being considered in Circleville. “The country [...]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- One of the biggest issues the next Ohio governor will need to address is how to handle the boom in data center development across the state. Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy have both outlined what sort of limits they would each put on data centers if elected, and many [...]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- One central Ohio man's search for his ancestors has uncovered a mystery hidden for more than a century. Records show a cemetery once stood in the heart of Clintonville. As of Thursday, the graves are still gone and while some burials were moved, records for many others have never been found. [...]

MARION, Ohio (WCMH) -- A Marion County man could spend half a century in prison for opening fire on a group of people including two Marion Police officers. Isaiah Redmon forced his way into a home on North Grand Avenue in Marion and assaulted another man in Sept. 2025. He fled, but then came back [...]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- An Illinois man arrested in connection to a deadly shooting in the north Columbus neighborhood received a $2 million bond Thursday. On July 31, officers arrived around 10 p.m. to Summit Park Apartments, located on the 2300 block of Le Marie Court, where they found two people suffering from gunshot wounds. [...]

A 26-year-old Canadian man once described as one of the most consequential cybercrime threat actors of 2024 has pleaded guilty to computer fraud and conspiracy to hack and extort more than 165 organizations that used the cloud data storage provider Snowflake. Connor Riley Moucka, of Kitchener, Ontario, also admitted to stealing call and text history records of more than 100 million AT&T customers.

A surveillance photo of Connor Riley Moucka, a.k.a. “Judische” and “Waifu,” dated Oct 21, 2024, 9 days before Moucka’s arrest. This image was included in an affidavit filed by an investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

The U.S. Justice Department said between February and October 2024, Moucka and co-conspirators used stolen login credentials to steal cloud-hosted data belonging to at least 165 customers of a U.S.-based software-as-a-service company.

The hackers targeted stolen credentials for Snowflake customer accounts that did not enforce multi-factor authentication, and extorted or attempted to extort a host of well-known companies, including TicketMaster, Lending Tree, Advance Auto Parts and Neiman Marcus. Snowflake responded to the data thefts by increasing password complexity requirements and enforcing multi-factor authentication.

Moucka adopted new nicknames frequently — sometimes operating multiple identities concurrently — but two of his best-known monikers were “Judische” and “Waifu.” Judische’s admitted role in the Snowflake data thefts was first documented by KrebsOnSecurity in a September 2024 story about the overlap between Western, English-speaking cybercriminals and extremist groups that harass and extort minors into harming themselves or others.

That September 2024 story identified Judische as a software engineer from Ontario who has been involved in numerous data breaches and voice phishing attacks against U.S. companies since at least 2020. A little more than a month later, Canadian authorities arrested Moucka on a provisional warrant from the United States.

The government says Moucka and others used their unauthorized access to steal billions of sensitive customer records and download terabytes of information, “including individuals’ non-content call and text history records, banking and other financial information, payroll records, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registration numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, social security numbers and other personally identifiable information. They then extorted victims by threatening to publish data online.”

Moucka also threatened and harassed government officials and security researchers who were helping to track him down. The Justice Department said the conspirators made over $2.5 million in ransom payments, and that in at least one instance, Moucka re-extorted a victim with threats of further disclosure of the victim’s stolen data.

“Moucka used the stolen data of a government officer and members of a then-former government officer’s immediate family in this re-extortion attempt,” reads a statement from the Justice Department.

One of Moucka’s admitted co-conspirators is Cameron “Kiberphant0m” Wagenius, a U.S. Army soldier who pleaded guilty in July 2025 to extorting AT&T and Verizon for their customer account data. Less than a month before Wagenius’s arrest, KrebsOnSecurity published a deep dive into Kiberphant0m’s various Telegram and Discord identities over the years, revealing how the owner of the accounts told others they were in the Army and stationed in South Korea.

One of several selfies on the Facebook page of Cameron Wagenius.

Kiberphant0m also re-extorted victims. Immediately following Moucka’s arrest, Kiberphant0m posted on hacker forums what he claimed were the AT&T call logs for then President-elect Donald Trump and for then Vice President Kamala Harris, as well schematics allegedly stolen from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

Wagenius is set to be sentenced on September 3, 2026. The government says he faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, a maximum penalty of five years in prison for extortion in relation to computer fraud, and a mandatory two-year sentence consecutive to any other prison time for aggravated identity theft.

The third alleged co-conspirator is John Erin Binns, 26, an elusive American man who fled the United States after being indicted for his admitted role in a 2021 breach at T-Mobile that exposed the personal information of at least 76 million customers.

Sources close to the investigation said Binns, also known as “IRDev” and “IntelSecrets,” was until recently incarcerated in a Turkish prison, but that he has since been released and has resurfaced online. Those sources said Binns also recently obtained Turkish citizenship, and under Turkish law a citizen cannot be extradited to a foreign country.

An image of a passport that Binns shared in an email to KrebsOnSecurity in Feb. 2023.

Moucka pleaded guilty to four criminal counts, including computer fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy. He is slated to be sentenced on Oct. 27 and faces a mandatory minimum penalty of two years in prison on the aggravated identity theft count, as well as a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison on the remaining counts. Ultimately, it will be up the federal judge how much time Moucka actually serves for his extensive cybercriminal rap sheet.

For an interview with Moucka prior to his arrest and a deeper look at Binns, see our original report on Moucka’s arrest.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Columbus police said Wednesday that a person who was found unresponsive Monday in the area of Gault Street and Rhodes Avenue was not related to a shooting and chase as they initially thought. Police initially believed the person was associated with suspects from a shooting in the area of South High [...]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — A former Ohio State football player who pleaded guilty to a string of bank robberies in Franklin County received his sentence Thursday. Marcus Williamson, a former cornerback for the Buckeyes between 2017 and 2021, previously pleaded guilty to nine felony counts. The plea bargain included guilty pleas on five counts of [...]