The FBI has officially asked the extradition of Romanian Marcel Lazar Lehel, a famous hacker known as Guccifer.

He could thus answer before a US court for allegedly hacking the e-mail accounts of several personalities and revealing some of their personal correspondence. If things get there, Guccifer might face a sentence of several decades and could also have to pay millions of dollars, reports local Stirileprotv.ro.

Timisoara Court of Appeal is to decide his fate in two months.

In June 2014, Guccifer, a former taxi driver, was jailed in Romania for seven years for having hacked into the e-mail accounts of the Romanian Intelligence Service SRI director George Maior, of MEP Corina Cretu (now the European Commissioner for Regional Policies), as well as those of several movie and TV stars. 

Before that, he is believed to have also accessed the e-mail accounts of international officials, among which Colin Powell, members of the Bush family, Rockefellers, and Obama administration officials.

He is believed to have published personal emails between former US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Romanian Corina Cretu. Both Powell and Cretu denied the authenticity of those emails.

Also in June 2014, the Romanian hacker was indicted in the US on charges of hacking into email accounts of high-profile people including the family of former presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com