Like a shrewd poker player, Mike Bloomberg played a game of bluff with an extortionate computer hacker for five months by sending him encouraging e-mails to lure him into the feds’ hands, a jury heard yesterday.
“It’s hard to estimate the value of your services,” Bloomberg told the hacker in March 2000 after the blackmailer demanded that he be paid for explaining how he broke into the media entrepreneur’s computer.
“Give me some idea of what you think would be fair . . . I need something for the accountants before I could get a check to pay.”
The future New York mayor had no intention of ever meeting the hacker’s $200,000 demand, testified Tom Secunda, a senior employee at Bloomberg’s media company.
But Bloomberg played along with the computer geek after FBI agents advised him to string the blackmailer along in the hope of uncovering details that would led to his arrest, Secunda said.
Secunda, who was responsible for the security systems of Bloomberg LP, said the hacker was “constantly attacking us” for several days when he first broke into the system by pretending to be Bloomberg himself.
Details of Bloomberg’s game of bluff were outlined yesterday at the Manhattan trial of the accused hacker, Oleg Zezev, a Kazakhstan national who allegedly sent extortionate e-mails to Bloomberg using Hotmail addresses in the name of “bloomberg_mike” and “alexalex65.”
In one e-mail read to jury members yesterday, Bloomberg offered to have his company jet pick up Zezev and take him to a neutral hotel for a meeting.
“I will even come myself to look you in eye and see if we trust each other enough for long-term business relationship,” Bloomberg wrote April 6, 2000. “Can you do next week?” he asked in another e-mail eight days later.
“What airport do I pick you up at? Will put normal food and wine selection on plane unless you have any foods you don’t eat.”
But Zezev allegedly branded the e-mail “useless correspondence,” saying Bloomberg was trying to buy time while his company tried to “fix their holes in the system.”
“Mike, why don’t you want to pay me for done job?” one e-mail said. “I am tired of watching the actions of your programmers while I could suggest the reliable and manageable protection.”
Zezev also allegedly warned in the same e-mail: “I have all evidences that the Bloomberg system threatens business of its clients . . . I can inform the world of this danger.”
At one stage, the hacker had grown so confident that he asked to be given authorized access to Bloomberg computer system, the jury was told.
Zezev was busted in a Hilton Hotel in London along with his lawyer, Igor Yarimaka, who will stand trial in Manhattan next month.