New Delhi, July 11 -- sit between the victim and the criminal, talk the ransom down, and manage the crisis. Angelo Martino was doing the opposite.

A federal jury in Florida convicted Martino this week on charges that he conspired with the BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware operation throughout 2023, deploying attacks against American businesses and splitting the extortion proceeds with the gang he was supposedly negotiating against. Martino is the third person sentenced in a scheme that federal prosecutors say generated more than $1.2 million in a single attack and yielded over $10 million in assets seized by law enforcement.

His co-conspirators, Kevin Martin and Ryan Goldberg, were convicted earlier for their roles in the same operation. The th...