Federal prosecutors charged journalist and media consultant Timothy Burke with 14 federal crimes — including conspiracy — in an indictment that was unsealed Thursday.
Burke, 45, was arrested Thursday morning, the Tampa Bay Times reported. He was set to appear in federal court in Tampa later Thursday afternoon.
Burke’s lawyer, Mark Rasch, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on behalf of his client.
The indictment accuses Burke and an unnamed co-conspirator of carrying out a plan, which began around February 2022 and continued until May 2023, to illegally obtain and then distribute “electronic items” found on protected computers and servers, including materials from “a multinational media company headquartered in New York City, New York.”
Initially filed on Feb. 15 and unsealed Thursday, the indictment says Burke “played multiple roles in the conspiracy, including utilizing compromised credentials to gain unauthorized access to protected computers, scouring those protected computers for electronic items and information, obtaining and stealing electronic items and information deemed desirable, organizing and exploiting some of those electronic items and information, and intercepting and disclosing the contents of wire, oral, and/or electronic video communications.”
Burke and the co-conspirator discussed their plans on Twitter direct message and through Google accounts, according to the indictment. They then allegedly obtained “compromised credentials” to access protected computers, repeatedly, in order to acquire and steal materials from those devices before sharing them with others.
The pair then covered their tracks, messing with the downloaded content to make it appear as though it did not originate from the program, accessed illegally by Burke and his co-conspirator, according to the indictment.
The indictment does not detail exactly what the files contained, but the Tampa Bay Times reported that the content included “protected…
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