Hamza is an Algerian cyber-criminal and a carder who goes by the code name BX1 and has been nicknamed the "Smiling Hacker". He was on the top 10 list of the most wanted hackers by Interpol and the FBI for allegedly embezzling tens of millions of dollars from more than two hundred American and European financial institutions, via a computer virus, the "SpyEYE Botnet" that infected more than 60 million computers worldwide (mostly from the United States),which he co-developed with his Russian accomplice Aleksandr Andreivich Panin, aka "Gribodemon", to steal banking information stored on infected computers.
After a three-year chase, Bendelladj was arrested on January 8, 2013 by Thai police while making a stopover in Bangkok in transit between Malaysia and Egypt. He did not resist arrest. He said goodbye to his family as he was arrested and his wife and daughter continued their journey to Egypt without him. He was extradited in May 2013 to the United States. He was tried in Atlanta where he pleaded guilty on June 25, 2015. He faced a sentence of up to 30 years in prison and a fine of fourteen million dollars.