Guccifer has been a 'nuisance' hacker, specializing in breaking into celebrity email accounts – including those of a close friend of Colin Powell and the sister of George Bush – and publishing embarrassing information.
The DIOCT announcement says, "there is reasonable suspicion that during 2013... the accused LML accessed repeatedly and without law, in violation of security measures, e-mail accounts belonging to public figures in Romania, in order to come into possession of confidential data in email."
Romania Insider, an English-language Romanian news site identifies the man as Guccifer, adding, "Caught in the Romanian city of Arad, where he lived, Marcel Lazar Lehel is believed to have also hacked the email accounts of several Romanian individuals, including the head of the Romanian Intelligence Service SRI, George Maior."
Maior was among a list of victims announced earlier this month after Guccifer sent his archive to The Smoking Gun. "'i don’t know what near future hold for me,' the hacker stated, adding that the thousands of documents were being provided to a reporter 'in case I disappear,'” reported TSG. The Romanian intelligence responded, according to Mediafax, "It is an old private email to Mr Maior, used before becoming director of the Service and only used for academic purposes... 'Little Guccifer' will be caught and prosecuted by the law."
Guccifer was little known outside of Romania before last year, although Marcel Leher received a three year jail sentence with parole in 2012. "The 40-year old had a similar conviction in 2011, after having hacked the Facebook accounts of several employees of a media group, and made public some of the private contents," reports Romania Insider.
"That changed last Feb. 7, when Guccifer broke into the accounts of several Bush friends and relatives — including George W.’s sister and brother-in-law — and passed dozens of e-mails and photos to the Smoking Gun, a website that collects incriminating public documents, mugshots and other miscellanea. The e-mails included intimate details on George H.W. Bush’s health problems and vacation plans," reports The Washington Post.
Guccifer's most infamous exploit, however, was to leak details of the close relationship between former US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Romanian diplomat and politician Corina Cretu, forcing him to publicly deny an extra-marital affair. "This hacker is driving everyone here crazy... The hacker gets addresses from my contact list which he got when he hacked into President Bush's account. Our security people have been chasing him for months. He may have lots of your emails, maybe not, so best to delete all between us," Wrote Powell to Cretu in an email lifted and published by Guccifer.