Amir Barati, 40, an Iranian who also holds Turkish citizenship, has been extradited from Montenegro to the United States to face criminal charges, police in Montenegro and a person familiar with the case told CNN on 1 October 2026 (US time).

CNN reports he is accused of being part of a hacking scheme that breached more than 150 US universities and companies while targeting data worth over $3 billion, and is expected to face wire and computer fraud charges in the US Southern District of New York, where he and 16 other Iranian nationals were charged in a superseding indictment in August; Montenegrin police arrested him in June at the FBI's request.

According to The Record, Barati was arrested on 25 June in the coastal municipality of Kotor, a Montenegrin court issued a final extradition decision that week, and the 14-count indictment alleges the campaign was run through the Mabna Institute on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; the Justice Department accuses the group of breaching 144 US universities, 42 US companies, 178 foreign universities and at least 11 foreign companies and stealing at least 31 terabytes of information, and of targeting about 8,000 professors' email accounts between 2013 and 2017. Accused Iranian hackers rarely see a US courtroom, CNN notes.

Primary: CNN; wire: The Record.

Correction (25 Oct 2026): the card now rests on CNN and The Record and uses CNN's figure of data worth over $3 billion; details that only an unreadable wire carried (agency and NGO victim counts and reward offers) and a dead AP/ABC News link have been removed. (source: CNN)

Correction (25 Oct 2026): the card date has moved from 1 to 2 October 2026, the Perth date of CNN's report (published 1 October, 19:33 UTC; 2 October, 3:33 am Perth). (source: CNN)