The beach at Cayo Guillermo, on the northern shore of Cuba. (Photo courtesy of Wikipeida.org)
BOSTON – A Somerville man accused of wreaking havoc after hacking into a local hospital’s computer network turned up in a sailboat off the coast of Cuba Tuesday, where his craft had foundered, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Martin Gottesfeld, 31, faces a single criminal conspiracy charge for disrupting the unidentified medical center’s information system in 2014, according to a statement Wednesday from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston. It said Gottesfeld, acting in the name of the notorious international hacktivist group Anonymous, hoped to affect a then-ongoing and heavily publicized custody battle involving the state over a teenage patient at the unnamed hospital.
Officials did not identify the patient or the medical facility. But during the summer of 2014, a headline-making custody fight that involved a state agency, the Department of Children and Families, Boston Children’s Hospital and a 16-year-old girl from Connecticut came to an end after more than a year.
Federal authorities say Gottesfeld threatened the hospital with a cyber attack in March 2014 by way of a video posted on YouTube, using a computer-generated voice to threaten the institution. A month later, hackers allegedly unleashed enough damage over a week to crash the unnamed hospital’s website, disrupt its network, upset daily operations and curtail ongoing research. The government said the attack came in the form of hundreds of malicious messages flooding the hospital’s systems.
The attack forced the hospital to cut off access to email and the Internet and take other measures to protect patient care and data. Steps to protect confidential patient information and mitigate the damage cost the hospital more than $300,000, according to the federal prosecutor’s statement.
Investigators traced the YouTube post to the Somerville man, and found Twitter messages on his computer that discussed the attack, court documents show. Gottesfeld became aware of federal authorities’ interest in him in October 2014, when the FBI searched his home in connection with the hospital hacking, according to the Justice Department statement. In an affidavit, Michael Tunick, an FBI special agent, said Gottesfeld denied any involvement in the attack but told investigators he had posted the YouTube video.
Though it remains unclear when he fled, officials said they realized Gottesfeld had left the area after Somerville police officers stopped by his apartment last week for a wellness check. Concerns expressed by family and employers, who had not heard from him or his wife in several weeks, prompted the check, according to the Justice Department.
Federal authorities learned on Tuesday that Gottesfeld and his wife had been rescued by a passing cruise ship after a near disaster at sea. Crew of the ship plucked the couple from a sailboat that had run into trouble off the coast of Cuba, after they had made a distress call. Their destination wasn’t revealed in the Justice Department statement, which didn’t name the suspect’s wife. In the affidavit, Tunick said the couple had luggage and three laptop computers with them when they were rescued.
Gottesfeld was arrested after the cruise ship put into port in Miami. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted on the conspiracy charge, the prosecutors said.
Anonymous, the group that Gottesfeld allegedly said he represented, has earned a reputation for going after public figures, organizations, businesses and even national governments that its members say are corrupt. Their past targets have included the Church of Scientology, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and the Islamic State terrorist group. At one point, the organization enjoyed close ties with WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.
Assange famously helped Edward Snowden, a National Security Administration contractor with access to classified information, evade authorities after he leaked sensitive government data to news outlets.
The beach at Cayo Guillermo, on the northern shore of Cuba. (Photo courtesy of Wikipeida.org) 
