Canadian man charged in Yahoo hack loves fancy cars, parties

High flying?: Baratov boasts of having paid off a mortgage while still in high school and of having sold an Internet company for US$20mil (RM88.68mil) as a teen. Pictured is the John Sopinka Courthouse, where Baratov appeared in front of a judge.

HAMILTON, Ontario: The Canadian charged in connection with a massive hack of Yahoo accounts that the United States says was a Russian plot is a young man who has boasted on social media of his wealth and love of expensive cars, online accounts show.

Karim Baratov, a 22-year-old dual Kazakh-Canadian citizen, is fighting extradition to face US charges he was paid by Russian intelligence agents to break into e-mail accounts. The 2014 theft of 500 million Yahoo Inc accounts was at the time the largest ever such breach.