Two men from Iran were charged with making several attempts to scare voters and manipulate the 2020 election, according to the Department of Justice.
A New York court unsealed an indictment Thursday, charging two Iranians for attempting to “intimidate and influence” U.S. voters and undermine voter confidence in the 2020 election, the DOJ said.
“This indictment details how two Iran-based actors waged a targeted, coordinated campaign to erode confidence in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system and to sow discord among Americans,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the DOJ’s National Security Division in a statement.
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The two charged hackers, Seyyed Mohammad Hossein Musa Kazemi, 24, and Sajjad Kashian, 27, obtained confidential voter information from at least one state and sent threatening messages to voters, including videos with false information regarding the election infrastructure, according to Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. They also attempted to hack several states’ voting-related websites, successfully accessing a U.S. media company’s computer network that “if not for successful FBI and victim company efforts to mitigate, would have provided the conspirators another vehicle to disseminate false claims after the election,” the charges allege.
Both Kazemi and Fashion are “experienced Iran-based computer hackers who worked as contractors for an Iran-based company formerly known as Eeleyanet Gostar, and now known as Emennet Pasargad,” officials said. Eeleyanet Gostar claims to provide cybersecurity services within Iran to several clients, including the Iranian government.
The Iranian hackers sent emails to hundreds of voters claiming to be part of the right-wing Proud Boys group, the unsealed documents allege. These emails attempted to threaten Democratic voters in Alaska, Pennsylvania, and Arizona with messages telling readers, “You will vote for Trump on Election Day, or we will come after you,” the Washington Post reported. Local Florida voters also received threatening emails purportedly from the Proud Boys, according to the Miami Herald.
The pair of hackers also spread doubt in messages to Republican officials, including the White House, alleging the Democratic Party planned to exploit “serious security vulnerabilities” in state voter registration to “edit mail-in ballots or even register non-existent voters,” the unsealed documents allege.
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Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Christopher Wray previously reported in October that Iranian and Russian agents had separately gained access to U.S. voter registration information and used it to send spoofed emails regarding then-President Donald Trump. The hackers also spread false information through video.
Kazemi and Kashian are both charged with one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse, intimidate voters, and transmit interstate threats; one count of voter intimidation; and one count of transmission of interstate threats, according to the DOJ. Kazemi is also charged with one count of unauthorized computer intrusion and one count of computer fraud after he compromised email servers to send the threatening messages, officials added. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
