Marquis Hooper, a former Navy chief petty officer, was sentenced Oct. 16, 2023, in federal court in Fresno, Calif., to more than five years in prison for hacking a database containing personal information, which he and his wife sold for $160,000 in Bitcoin, the Justice Department said. (Joshua Magbanua/U.S. Air Force)
A former Navy chief petty officer is going to prison for using his job at Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan to steal and sell $160,000 worth of personal information belonging to thousands of people, the Justice Department said.
Marquis Hooper, 32, of Selma, Calif., was sentenced Monday in federal court in Fresno to five years and five months. He and his wife, Natasha Chalk, pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Hooper also pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Chalk is scheduled to be sentenced next month, the Justice Department said. The maximum prison term for the conspiracy conviction alone is 20 years.
The two obtained information by accessing a private database and selling it in exchange for Bitcoin on the dark web, according to prosecutors.
The couple’s criminal plot began in August 2018, about two months before Hooper’s 10-year military career ended, according to court documents.
At the time, he was stationed in Japan as an IT manager. Chalk was a naval reservist at Naval Air Station Lemoore in California.
Hooper opened an online account with a company that runs a database containing personal information for millions of people.
The company, which was not identified in court documents, restricts access to the database to businesses and government agencies with a proven and lawful need for the information.
Hooper falsely told the company he was representing 7th Fleet and needed access to perform background checks on Navy personnel, according to court filings.
Hooper then added Chalk’s name to the account, and they retrieved more than 9,000 people’s information, which they sold to third parties for $160,000, the Justice Department said.
Some buyers of the information used it to commit further crimes, the Justice Department said. Someone tried to withdraw money from a bank account in Arizona using a fake California driver’s license with information bought from Hooper and Chalk. A bank teller declined the transaction, according to court documents.
The company closed Hooper’s account in December 2018 after suspecting fraud, but that didn’t stop him, federal prosecutors said.
Three months later, he tried to access the database again through a contact stationed on the USS George Washington, which was docked in Newport News, Va., according to court documents.
Hooper told the sailor, identified in court documents by the initials K.D., that he would pay him $2,500 for each month that the account was open.
Hooper had K.D. falsely list another sailor as the supply officer who would sign for the account, prosecutors said, adding that Hooper and Chalk then sent K.D. false documents and a forged letter from the carrier’s commanding officer.
The application was flagged for possible fraud and declined, court documents state. K.D. was listed as of this week as an unindicted co-conspirator, according to the Justice Department.
