Helsinki District Court remanded a 25-year-old Finnish man in absentia on Thursday for his suspected role in the hacking of patient data at the psychotherapy centre Vastaamo, at the request of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).
Vastaamo was the target of major data breaches in November 2018 and March 2019.
The privately-run centre announced two years ago that sensitive information of about 30,000 patients had been stolen by hackers who then tried to extort money from the company and its customers.
Yle has confirmed that the suspect in the case is the well-known hacker Julius Kivimäki, who now uses the first name Aleksanteri. He is also known online by the handle 'Zeekill.'
Yle has chosen to reveal the suspect's identity due to the social significance of the Vastaamo data breach. However, police did not confirm the suspect's name.
Authorities also said there was no definite information about his current whereabouts.
The police said authorities have established the suspect currently resides abroad and that a European arrest warrant has been issued. Kivimäki himself has said he is living in Dubai, UAE, according to Yle's information.
"We have made significant progress in the investigation and have come to this point through perseverance and diligence. The criminal investigation has been carried out in close cooperation with the local police, and with other national and international authorities. It is still too early to estimate when the case can be referred to the prosecutor for consideration of charges," the NBI's Head of Investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Marko Leponen, said in a statement.
Background
Originally from Espoo, Kivimäki is well known around the world and has openly spoken to the media about crimes he has committed in Finland and abroad.
In 2015, when he was still a teenager, a Finnish court found Kivimäki guilty of more than 50,000 aggravated computer break-ins. Among other targets, he attacked large educational institutions in the US, hijacking emails, stealing credit card details and blocking site traffic.
Kivimäki received a two year suspended sentence for those charges.
Before that, the young Kivimäki called emergency services in the US, misleading police to enter the home of an FBI agent's parents. That resulted in an investigation by the federal law enforcement agency.
Kivimäki was also responsible for making a fake bomb threat about an American Airlines flight. For those crimes, as a juvenile, he received a one-year suspended sentence.
In an interview with Finnish publication Long Play, Kivimäki said that a suspended sentence "did not mean anything" if no new crimes were committed during that time.
The courts' suspended sentences for the extensive crimes attracted a good deal of international media attention, including from the BBC.