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Columbian Hacker Manipulated Elections

News. Andrés Sepúlveda is a Columbian hacker and 31 years of age. For 8 years he has traveled Latin America rigging major political campaigns.

With a team of hackers Andrés Sepúlveda has stolen campaign strategies, manipulated social media to create false waves of enthusiasm and derision, and installed spyware in opposition offices, all to help Peña Nieto, a right-of-center Mexican candidate, eke out a victory. And so Nieto did – after spending $600,000 to get help for his election, according to Sepúlveda – he became the president of Mexico July 1st 2012.

Bloomberg News brings the first-time-told unusual story about how the hacker has helped manipulate one political campaign after another in Latin America and Florida, and Bloomberg did double-check the hackers confessions and accusations before publishing it.

For $12,000 a month, Sepúlveda hired a crew that could hack smartphones, spoof and clone Web pages, and send mass e-mails and texts. The premium package, at $20,000 a month, also included a full range of digital interception, attack, decryption, and defense. His jobs were carefully laundered through layers of middlemen and consultants. Sepúlveda says many of the candidates he helped might not even have known about his role.

On the question of whether the U.S. presidential campaign is being tampered with, he is unequivocal. “I’m 100 percent sure it is,” he says to Bloomberg.

Read the long portrait of Sepúlveda, who he helped and how at Bloomberg.