From Cellblock to Courtroom: 70‑Month Prison Term
Even while confined, the 22‑year‑old Army specialist tried to get ChatGPT to sketch a radio antenna that could help him tunnel out of the Federal Correctional Institution.
He pleaded guilty to hacking multiple telecom providers and was sentenced in Seattle to 70 months in federal prison, with nearly $295 k in restitution ordered.
Alias, Allies, and the Wider Plot
Operating under the moniker “Kiberphant0m,” Wagenius teamed up with known cyber‑criminal Kenneth Schuchman, the man behind the 2019 Satori IoT botnet.
Two other conspirators surfaced during the investigation. Conor Riley Moucka, known as “Judische,” was arrested in 2024 and later pleaded guilty to stealing data from Snowflake. John Erin Binns remains at large for a 2021 breach of T‑Mobile that exposed the records of at least 76 million customers.
What He Was After Behind Bars
The sentencing memorandum reveals that Wagenius attempted to obtain details on Windows 10 Enterprise privilege‑escalation vulnerabilities and specifically on CVE‑2023‑45208, a D‑Link command‑injection flaw.
He also asked an AI system for step‑by‑step instructions to build a makeshift radio antenna and even queried escape‑related tactics.
Investigation Footprint
Multiple federal agencies teamed up: the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI, Army CID, and the U.S. Secret Service all contributed to the case.
Unconfirmed Claims
Wagenius has claimed to have stolen call‑and‑text metadata for tens of millions of AT&T customers and to have extorted AT&T and Verizon for Bitcoin. Those statements have not been verified by the court documents.