ETFC E TRADE Financial Corporation

By Nicole Hong 

The Russian government offered asylum to a U.S. citizen charged with orchestrating the hack into J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and several other companies, his lawyer said Thursday.

The defendant, 32-year-old Joshua Aaron, made his first U.S. court appearance this week after living as a fugitive in Russia for more than a year. He arrived in the U.S. on Wednesday and pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court.

Mr. Aaron was indicted in November 2015 along with two Israeli citizens. They were accused of stealing data on more than 100 million people from a dozen companies' computers, including J.P. Morgan, E*Trade Financial Corp. and Dow Jones & Co., the parent company of The Wall Street Journal. The hack into J.P. Morgan was believed to be the largest data breach of a U.S. financial institution.

When the indictment was publicly announced last year, Mr. Aaron had been living in Russia, which doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

The two Israelis, Gery Shalon and Ziv Orenstein, were extradited to the U.S. earlier this year. They have pleaded not guilty.

After a court hearing Thursday, defense lawyer Benjamin Brafman said Mr. Aaron voluntarily wanted to return to the U.S. and turned down an offer of asylum from the Russian government. The offer came after Mr. Aaron had applied for asylum, then withdrew his application following consultation with U.S. lawyers, according to Mr. Brafman.

Mr. Aaron was being detained in Russia on a visa violation, and the State Department spent several months fighting with Russian authorities to bring him back, Mr. Brafman said. A representative for the State Department didn't immediately return a request for comment.

"Someone in Russia was trying to keep him there," Mr. Brafman said, declining to discuss why Mr. Aaron was in Russia in the first place.

Whether Russia would ever release Mr. Aaron was a source of speculation for months.

His arrival in the U.S. came two days after President-elect Donald Trump named Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of State, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp. who has long done business in Russia and has ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The indictment alleges Mr. Aaron played a key role in the computer hacks by identifying companies and providing login credentials to hackers. Prosecutors say the three men used information stolen from the companies to facilitate a broader network of criminal activity, including illegal online casinos and an unlicensed bitcoin exchange.

Write to Nicole Hong at nicole.hong@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 15, 2016 13:40 ET (18:40 GMT)

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