A Disney cruise ship rescued a man and his wife at sea on Tuesday, February 16; the man is the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation and was arrested when the ship docked in Miami on Wednesday, February 17.
Martin Gottesfeld, 31, of Somerville, Massachusetts, has been investigated since October 2014 in connection with a computer attack on Boston Children’s Hospital. Several weeks ago, the couple disappeared and after getting concerned calls from employers and relatives, the FBI had begun looking for them.
On Tuesday, an FBI agent in the Bahamas called the Boston office with the news that the couple had been found on a Disney Cruise Ship. The report states: “Gottesfeld and his wife were not passengers on the ship but rather had been picked up in a sailboat, not far from Cuba. The sailboat had run into trouble and Gottesfeld and his wife had placed a distress call, to which the cruise ship responded.”
The report did not say where the couple was headed, but that they did have luggage and three laptops with them.
The computer attack took place in April 2014 as a response to the case of a teenage girl “who was the subject of a high-profile custody battle between her parents and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” The case involved doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital accusing the parents of Justina Pelletier of abusing her and ultimately they put her in a psychiatric ward, taking away custody from the parents. The parents eventually won the case and custody of their daughter, but a group known as “Anonymous,” allegedly led by Gottesfeld, posted a video online, sharing information about the hospital’s server and asking for people to attack the hospital’s network. The attack wiped out the network for seven days and caused $300,000 of damage.
Gottesfeld admitted to posting the video, but denies any participation in the actual attacks.
He has been charged with conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to protected computers and is being voluntarily detained until a hearing in Boston’s U.S. District Court.
News source: NBC News and ABC News
Photo credit: Boston Children’s Hospital
