The former president of a US hacking and surveillance tools maker has admitted for the first time to stealing and selling technology that could hack millions of computers and people around the world, US prosecutors have admitted for the first time.
In October, Australian national Peter Williams, 39, pleaded guilty to selling eight hacking tools stolen from his employer, Trenchent. Trenchent is a division of L3Harris, a US defense contractor that sells tools to enable surveillance to the US government and its closest allies. According to the Department of Justice, Williams admitted to earning more than $1.3 million from selling cryptocurrencies between 2022 and 2025.
Federal prosecutors said in court documents released Tuesday that Williams' actions “directly harmed” the U.S. intelligence community by selling hacking tools to Russian companies, whose customers include the Russian government.
Although Williams was known to have sold Torrent exploits (software that exploits flaws in other software to typically gain access to someone's computer or device), prosecutors now claim that these eight tools could have been used to enable indiscriminate government surveillance, cybercrime, and ransomware attacks around the world.
This latest disclosure was made ahead of Williams' sentencing, scheduled for February 24 in federal court in Washington, DC. In a sentencing memorandum used by prosecutors to persuade courts to impose the maximum sentence, the Justice Department said the exploit sold by Williams “could potentially give Russian brokers and their customers access to millions of computers and devices around the world, including in the United States.”
Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Williams to nine years in prison, three years of supervised release, $35 million in mandatory restitution, and a fine of up to $250,000. The memorandum said Mr Williams will be deported to Australia after completing his sentence.
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In response to the prosecutor's memorandum, Ms. Williams submitted a letter to the judge explaining her decision that she regrets her actions.
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“I made a choice that directly violated the values I believed in and the trust placed in me by my family, colleagues, and friends,” Williams wrote. “I now realize that I ignored my duties and training and did not seek help or guidance when I knew I was going in the wrong direction.”
Mr. Williams' attorney, John P. Lowery, wrote in a response to prosecutors that none of the stolen hacking tools were classified and there was no evidence that Mr. Williams knew the tools would end up in the hands of the Russian government or any other country's government. His lawyer said Mr Williams had no intention of harming the United States or his home country of Australia, but “now recognizes that was the result of his actions”.
When contacted by TechCrunch, Justice Department spokesperson Pearson Furnish declined to comment. Mr. Williams' attorney, Mr. Rowley, did not respond to a request for comment.
From scapegoat to judgment
In mid-2025, multiple sources familiar with the offensive cybersecurity industry told TechCrunch that someone working for Trenchint stole sensitive hacking tools and sold them to U.S. adversaries.
A former Trenchant employee has come forward and told TechCrunch that he was unfairly fired after the company accused him of stealing and leaking details about the company's exploits.
But by October, prosecutors formally charged Williams, also known as “Doogie,” who was Torrent's general manager at the time, with involvement in the theft of the company's hacking tools. The US government charged Williams with selling the exploit to a Russian broker in exchange for virtual currency.
Prosecutors said FBI agents had contact with Williams from late 2024 until the time of his arrest in mid-2025, during which time Williams oversaw an internal investigation into Trenchent's theft of company secrets.
Despite the ongoing investigation, Williams continued to sell the company's secrets and exploits (technically known as zero-days because the affected software makers did not have time to fix them), even though he knew the FBI was investigating the theft and sale of Trenchint's hacking tools.
Williams also oversaw the firing of a Trenchint employee accused of leaking the tools, sources told TechCrunch, and prosecutors later confirmed. The fired employee told TechCrunch that he believed he was a scapegoat for someone within the company. A few weeks after being fired, the employee received a notification from Apple that he had been targeted by government spyware, but the details have not yet been explained.
“[Williams] “He stood idly by while another employee of the company was held accountable for essentially his own actions; he stood idly by as an internal investigation falsely accused his subordinates,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum.
A spokesperson for Mr. Trenchent did not respond to a request for comment about Williams or the investigation.
It wasn't until August 6 that FBI agents obtained and executed a search warrant for Williams' home and confronted him with receipts for cryptocurrency payments, the alias he used to communicate with the Russian broker who purchased the stolen trade secrets, and evidence of his contract with the broker.
The Russian broker could be Operation Zero, which offers up to $20 million in tools to hack Android devices and iPhones. The company says it only sells to the Russian government and local organizations.
He did not respond to a request for comment on Operation Zero.
Prosecutors called the broker “one of the most nefarious exploit brokers in the world,” and said prosecutors chose the broker because “by their own admission, they knew they were paying the highest amount of money.”
Williams' “desire for more money, a better lifestyle, a bigger house, and more jewelry and trinkets could never be satisfied, and to satisfy that desire he chose to risk everything to betray his company, his colleagues, and the United States and its allies,” prosecutors wrote.