Cypriot hacker Joshua Epifaniou, 21, has been sentenced to one year and one day in prison in California, according to US media reports. The sentence takes into account that Epifaniou had been in custody since May 2017.

The young man was facing up to 20 years in prison in Georgia and Arizona – the fact that the actual sentence was significantly less could mean that he agreed to “cooperate” with US authorities. In addition, Epifaniou paid $389,113 and €70,000 in fines to the US government and about $600,000 to victims of his fraudulent schemes.

Recall that Joshua Epifaniou, then a minor, was arrested in May 2017 on suspicion of organising a DDoS attack on the Cypriot company Cablenet – the organisation’s servers went down for half a day. Between 2014 and 2017, according to the prosecution, the boy and his associates stole personal and financial data from several databases and used the loot for extortion, threatening to make the information public unless they were paid a ransom in bitcoins.