Auckland man to face trial for internet extortion

An Auckland man will face trial in the High Court next year after he allegedly hacked into email accounts to extort thousands of dollars from an American teacher.

Tomasz Grygoruk has pleaded not guilty and will stand trial at the Auckland High Court in May.

He told the Sunday Star-Times his lawyer Peter Kaye had instructed him not to comment on the case.

The newspaper reported an FBI agent had come to New Zealand to help prosecute the 22-year-old.

Grygoruk was 20 at the time he was alleged to have taken control of a Pennsylvania school teacher's emails, threatening to go public about his affair with a student.

Subsequent investigations found the teacher's relationship with a former student was not inappropriate.

But in March last year the teacher's Hotmail account was accessed by someone demanding he pay US$10,000 ($13,000) or rumours of the affair would be made public.

The FBI was called to investigate and the hacker was quickly traced to New Zealand.

Grygoruk was charged with blackmail and unlawful access to the teacher's email accounts.

FBI special agent Brad Mullins, who arrived in New Zealand on Tuesday, said it would be inappropriate to comment on the case.

The Auckland detective in charge of the investigation, Nick Newbery, said there were ongoing investigations involving Grygoruk's computer in the United States.

"It's a serious matter on an international scale." It was unknown whether the teacher was selected at random or the hacker had been monitoring him," Mr Newbery said.

- NZPA