Finland issues wanted notice for hacker behind massive psychotherapy data breach

Finland issues wanted notice for hacker behind massive psychotherapy data breach

Finnish police have reportedly issued a wanted notice for convicted hacker Aleksanteri Kivimäki after the country's Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal, paving the way for authorities to return him to prison in one of Finland's most high-profile cybercrime cases.

The Supreme Court's decision leaves in place a February Court of Appeal ruling that sentenced Kivimäki to nearly seven years in prison for hacking psychotherapy provider Vastaamo and later extorting both the company and its patients, according to Finnish media.

Following the ruling, Eastern Uusimaa Police said they issued the wanted notice at the request of Finland's Criminal Sanctions Agency. Officers have been instructed to arrest Kivimäki if he is located and transfer him to Vantaa Prison to serve the rest of his sentence.

His lawyer, Peter Jaari, told Finnish media that he does not know where his client is but believes Kivimäki is outside Finland.

The Court of Appeal convicted Kivimäki of aggravated data breach, attempted extortion and unlawfully distributing private information. The judges said the crimes were carefully planned, driven by financial gain and caused exceptional harm to a large number of especially vulnerable victims.

The court said the offenses would normally have justified the maximum available sentence. However, it reduced Kivimäki's prison term by one month because he reached compensation agreements with some of the victims.

Kivimäki has denied carrying out the attack throughout the case. He argued that prosecutors relied largely on circumstantial evidence, challenged the digital evidence linking him to the hack and disputed allegations involving cryptocurrency transactions tied to the extortion scheme.

The appeals court released Kivimäki from pretrial detention in September 2025 after finding that he had already spent enough time in custody and that keeping him detained any longer could violate his rights. Because most of his sentence had effectively been served while he awaited trial, he remained free during the appeals process.

Now that the Supreme Court has declined to hear the case, the conviction is final. Finnish authorities are trying to find Kivimäki so he can serve the remainder of his sentence.

The Vastaamo breach occurred in 2018 but did not become public until 2020, when the attacker first tried to extort the company before demanding money directly from thousands of patients.

When many victims refused to pay, confidential therapy notes and other highly sensitive records were published online. The stolen database contained information on about 33,000 patients, and more than 24,000 people reported receiving extortion demands. The case became the largest criminal case in Finnish history by number of victims, many of whom were children or people receiving treatment for severe psychological trauma.