A longtime Wikileaks volunteer who was close to Julian Assange became a paid informant for the FBI, Wired reported Thursday.
Sigurdur Thordarson, 20, of Iceland told Wired he received $5,000 from the FBI in exchange for sharing Wikileaks chat logs, video, and other data with the U.S. government.
According to Wired, Thordarson approached the U.S. government in August 2011 and was flown internationally for debriefings with the FBI a total of four times. When asked why he came to the FBI, Thoradson said “I guess I cooperated because I didn’t want to participate in having [hacking gangs] Anonymous and Lulzsec hack for Wikileaks, since then you’re definitely breaking quite a lot of laws.”
Wikileaks fired Thordarson in November 2011 when it accused him of embezzling funds through an online T-shirt store in the organization’s name. After a final meeting with the FBI in March of the next year, in which Thordarson turned over the eight hard drives worth of data to the agency, he was let go.
The FBI declined to comment for the Wired article.
