Federal cybercrime charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act carry up to 10–20 years per count. If the FBI has executed a search warrant or reached out to you, the investigation is already advanced. You need defense counsel who understands both the law and the technology.
The Southern District of Florida sits at the intersection of international finance, global telecommunications, and a massive concentration of financial institutions, making it one of the FBI Cyber Division's most active theaters for federal cybercrime prosecution.
Federal cybercrime cases in SDFL increasingly involve business email compromise, cryptocurrency theft and fraud, ransomware deployment, dark web transactions, and AI-assisted fraud operations. The DOJ Cybercrime Unit has dedicated resources specifically to the Southern District, and cooperation between the FBI Miami Field Office and international law enforcement partners has dramatically shortened investigation timelines.
If federal agents have contacted you, executed a search warrant, or if you know you are connected to an investigation, you are not dealing with a local matter. You are dealing with a federal apparatus that has been building its case before you knew it existed.
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030) is the foundation of virtually every federal computer crime prosecution. Its scope is breathtaking, any unauthorized access to any internet-connected computer qualifies as a "protected computer." Courts have struggled to define the boundaries of "unauthorized access," and recent Supreme Court jurisprudence in Van Buren v. United States (2021) has narrowed, but not eliminated, the government's reach.
Wire fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343) is stacked on top of CFAA charges whenever financial transactions are involved, which is nearly always. Wire fraud carries up to 20 years per count and is the preferred vehicle for BEC fraud, phishing schemes, and any cybercrime involving a financial institution.
Aggravated identity theft (18 U.S.C. § 1028A) adds a mandatory, non-waivable 2-year consecutive sentence on top of any underlying cybercrime conviction whenever stolen identity credentials were used. Federal prosecutors deploy this charge routinely in hacking and BEC cases to prevent plea bargaining from reducing total prison time.
Cryptocurrency and dark web offenses are an increasingly dominant category in SDFL prosecutions, ranging from Bitcoin mixing and darknet market transactions to NFT fraud and exchange manipulation.
Federal cybercrime defense requires an attorney who understands both the law and the technology. The government's digital forensic evidence is only as reliable as its chain of custody and methodology. We challenge both.
Digital forensics defense. Federal agents use commercial and proprietary tools to extract and interpret data from seized devices. These tools make errors. Metadata can be misread, deleted files misattributed, and IP logs misinterpreted. We retain independent digital forensics experts who can audit the government's methodology and identify errors in their evidence narrative.
CFAA authorization challenges. The critical question in many CFAA cases is whether access was truly "unauthorized." Employees accessing company systems, security researchers, and individuals operating under ambiguous IT permission structures have strong arguments that their access was authorized or exceeded only in technical, not legal, terms. Post-Van Buren, these arguments have increasing legal support.
Search and seizure challenges. Federal cybercrime search warrants are broad, sometimes overbroad. We evaluate every warrant for Fourth Amendment compliance, particularity requirements, and whether the government exceeded its authorization. Suppression of evidence obtained from overbroad digital searches has succeeded in multiple federal circuit courts.
Tracing attribution. In network intrusion cases, the government must prove you conducted the attack, not just that it came from your IP address, your account, or your device. IP addresses can be spoofed, accounts compromised, and devices shared. We scrutinize the technical attribution chain for every weakness.
18 U.S.C. § 1030, the CFAA, is the primary federal statute used to prosecute computer crime. It is extraordinarily broad: it covers unauthorized access to any 'protected computer' (which includes virtually any computer connected to the internet), intentional damage to computer systems, trafficking in passwords, and extortion threats involving computers. Federal prosecutors use it to charge everything from sophisticated network intrusions to employees accessing company files after being terminated. The statute's breadth is both a prosecutorial tool and a defense opportunity, many CFAA charges rely on sweeping interpretations of 'unauthorized access' that courts have increasingly scrutinized.
Yes. Financial gain is not required for a federal CFAA prosecution. Simply accessing a computer system 'without authorization' or 'exceeding authorized access', even for research, curiosity, or to expose a vulnerability, can trigger felony charges. Security researchers, pen testers working without proper documentation, and disgruntled employees who access former employer systems after termination are frequently charged under the CFAA regardless of intent to profit.
Federal cybercrime investigations are methodical and often span years before charges are filed. The FBI's Cyber Division uses digital forensics, IP tracing, ISP subpoenas, email account warrants, cryptocurrency blockchain analysis, and cooperating witnesses (often former co-conspirators who have already been arrested). By the time agents execute a search warrant on your devices or arrest you, they typically have months of evidence already assembled. This is why early legal intervention, ideally before a search warrant is executed, is so important.
Business Email Compromise (BEC) fraud involves compromising or spoofing business email accounts to redirect wire transfers. It is prosecuted federally because it almost always involves interstate wire transfers, which triggers federal wire fraud jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 1343. When cryptocurrency is involved, money laundering counts under 18 U.S.C. § 1956 are added. BEC schemes operating out of South Florida have resulted in multi-decade federal sentences in recent SDFL cases.
Federal agents will seize every digital device, phones, laptops, external drives, cloud-connected devices, cryptocurrency hardware wallets. They create forensic images and examine everything. The process can take months. You will not get your devices back quickly. More importantly, anything found on those devices, even unrelated to the alleged crime, can be used against you or trigger additional charges. Contact us immediately if you are served with a federal search warrant; you have rights during the execution process, and how you respond in those first moments matters.
18 U.S.C. § 1030 carries graduated penalties depending on the conduct: simple unauthorized access carries up to 1 year (misdemeanor), unauthorized access with intent to defraud carries 5 years per count, damaging a protected computer with reckless disregard carries 10 years, and damaging a computer with intentional harm to critical infrastructure or causing serious bodily injury carries 20 years per count. Where wire fraud and aggravated identity theft are charged alongside, total statutory exposure can exceed 30 years. Actual sentences are driven by USSG § 2B1.1 (loss amount) and § 2B5.3 (sophistication enhancement). Sentences for ransomware operators in recent SDFL cases have ranged from 7 to 20 years. The single largest sentencing battle in CFAA cases is the loss calculation, which often includes remediation costs, downtime, and consequential damages that defendants vigorously contest.
The CFAA (18 U.S.C. § 1030) prosecutes unauthorized computer access itself, the trespass into the system. Wire fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343) prosecutes schemes to defraud that use wire communications, including emails, phone calls, internet transactions, and electronic transfers. Most cybercrime indictments charge both: the CFAA count captures the network intrusion, while the wire fraud count captures the downstream fraud (stolen funds, exfiltrated data sold, fraudulent transactions). CFAA carries 5 to 20 years per count depending on the subsection; wire fraud carries 20 years per count, 30 if a financial institution is the victim. The dual-charging strategy maximizes count exposure and provides prosecutors with alternative theories if one charge is contested.
Cryptocurrency theft is prosecuted as a combination of CFAA (unauthorized access to wallets or exchanges), wire fraud (the digital communications and transactions used to execute the theft), aggravated identity theft (where credentials of real users are used), and money laundering (the conversion or movement of stolen crypto). Chain analysis from Chainalysis, TRM Labs, and Elliptic produces transaction graphs that prosecutors use to trace stolen funds across mixers, bridges, and exchanges. The FBI Virtual Asset Exploitation Unit, IRS-CI Cyber Crimes Unit, and HSI Cyber Crimes Center are all building parallel investigative capacity. Sentences in recent crypto theft cases have ranged from 5 to 20+ years depending on amount stolen and money laundering complexity. Defense work requires technical expertise in blockchain forensics alongside traditional CFAA and money laundering defense.
Several recur. **Authorization scope challenges** under Van Buren v. United States (2021) limit CFAA prosecution to defendants who actually exceeded the technical bounds of their access, not merely those who violated a use policy. Many CFAA charges fail after Van Buren when the defendant had legitimate technical access. **Attribution challenges** contest whether the government can prove that the defendant, rather than someone else with access to the device or account, performed the alleged conduct, this is critical where IP spoofing, VPNs, shared computers, or stolen credentials are involved. **Loss calculation challenges** attack the dramatic enhancements that come from including remediation, downtime, and consequential damages. **Specific intent challenges** apply where the government cannot prove the defendant knowingly acted without authorization, security researchers and penetration testers operating under ambiguous authorization frequently raise this defense.
No. FBI Cyber Division agents who arrive without notice have typically been investigating for months and have already obtained ISP records, email account warrants, financial records, and forensic evidence from third-party platforms. The agent's purpose is to capture admissions, observe consciousness of guilt, and generate inconsistencies they can later charge as 18 U.S.C. § 1001 false statements. In a cybercrime context, every technical statement you make is documented and will be tested against the forensic record. Even seemingly innocuous statements about what software you use, accounts you control, or devices you own become evidence. Decline politely, ask for the agents' contact information, and call counsel before they leave. The decision to provide a proffer comes later, on your terms, after we have reviewed the forensic landscape of the investigation.
Partially. The Department of Justice's 2022 CFAA charging policy directs federal prosecutors not to charge 'good-faith security research' that is conducted to test, investigate, or correct a security flaw and is carried out in a manner designed to avoid harm. The policy is not a statutory safe harbor, it is internal prosecutorial guidance that can be deviated from or rescinded. Researchers operating under written authorization, a 'scope letter' or bug-bounty engagement, have the strongest defense; those operating without contracted authority face real exposure even when intent is benign. The Van Buren v. United States (2021) decision narrowed CFAA 'exceeds authorized access' liability to technical access boundaries rather than use-policy violations, which protects much legitimate research. Defense work in research-adjacent cases focuses on documentation of authorization, scope, and harm-avoidance, and on framing the conduct under the DOJ policy where prosecution has nonetheless been initiated.
Yes. Former employees who use retained credentials, shared passwords, or undisclosed back-end access to enter their prior employer's systems are among the most commonly charged CFAA defendants. The case is typically built on log data showing post-termination logins, IP addresses traced to home networks, and forensic evidence of file exfiltration. Charges include 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2) (obtaining information from a protected computer), § 1030(a)(4) (accessing with intent to defraud), and frequently 18 U.S.C. § 1832 (theft of trade secrets) if proprietary data was taken. Sentencing under USSG § 2B1.1 is driven by loss amount, which prosecutors aggressively inflate using remediation costs, breach investigation expenses, and lost business projections. Van Buren narrowed liability for current-employee misuse of authorized access, but it offers no defense to access after the authorization itself has ended.
Ransomware prosecutions stack multiple statutes designed to capture every phase of the operation. The intrusion itself charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5) (damaging a protected computer), which carries up to 10 years per count and 20 years if the offense intentionally harms critical infrastructure. The ransom demand triggers 18 U.S.C. § 1951 (Hobbs Act extortion) and frequently 18 U.S.C. § 875(d) (interstate communication of extortionate demands). Cryptocurrency receipt and laundering generate 18 U.S.C. § 1956 money laundering counts. When victim entities include hospitals, schools, or municipalities, prosecutors add aggravating sentencing arguments under USSG § 2B1.1 and pursue maximum guidelines exposure. Recent SDFL ransomware cases have produced sentences of 8 to 25 years. Defense work focuses on attribution challenges through blockchain forensics, suppression of evidence obtained via foreign cooperation, and disputing the 'critical infrastructure' enhancement.
Yes, and it happens regularly. The United States has extradition treaties with more than 100 countries, and federal cybercrime offenses are extraditable in virtually all of them because they satisfy dual-criminality requirements. The FBI Cyber Division, with DOJ's Office of International Affairs, routinely pursues extradition from European Union member states, the United Kingdom, Australia, Israel, and Latin American partners. Defendants located in non-treaty jurisdictions (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea) are typically beyond reach unless they travel. Once arrested abroad, defendants face provisional detention, formal extradition proceedings, and often months or years of pretrial confinement before the case reaches a U.S. courtroom. Defense work begins before extradition by litigating in the foreign jurisdiction, challenging dual-criminality, invoking political offense exceptions, and identifying procedural defects in the U.S. extradition request.
Federal investigators use commercial blockchain analytics platforms, Chainalysis Reactor, TRM Labs, and Elliptic Investigator, to follow funds across the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and major altcoin blockchains. The analysis aggregates address clusters, identifies exchange deposits, tracks mixing service usage, and traces movements across bridges into privacy chains. Subpoenas to centralized exchanges (Coinbase, Kraken, Binance.US) produce Know-Your-Customer data linking on-chain addresses to real-world identities. The IRS Criminal Investigation Cyber Crimes Unit and FBI Virtual Asset Exploitation Unit have built dedicated tracing teams. Defense work requires independent blockchain forensic analysis: validating cluster heuristics, challenging address attribution, identifying false-positive matches in commingled transactions, and contesting tracing through mixers like Tornado Cash where probabilistic models fail. We retain on-chain investigators and present alternative attribution narratives in pretrial Daubert motions.
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Federal phishing charges carry 20 years per count plus mandatory consecutive time. If agents called about an invitation scam, contact counsel before indictment.
Federal aggravated identity theft under 18 U.S.C. § 1028A carries a mandatory two-year consecutive sentence that stacks on top of the underlying offense, with no judicial discretion to run it concurrently. When paired with wire fraud or healthcare fraud, a single case can produce 15 to 20 years in mandatory federal time.
Wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1343 is one of the most frequently charged federal crimes, and one of the most flexible tools in a federal prosecutor's toolkit. Any scheme to defraud that uses a wire communication crosses into federal jurisdiction. The penalty is up to 20 years per count.
Federal money laundering charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1956 carry up to 20 years per count. When federal prosecutors target financial transactions in South Florida, you need defense counsel who knows exactly how they build these cases, and how to dismantle them.