Alberto Gonzalez was the mastermind of the massive, headline generating data breach at Heartland Payment Systems, TJX and others, but it's clear he had some help from some former employees of top banks.

Last year, former Morgan Stanley software engineer Stephen Watt was given two years in jail for developing the software, a sniffer called "blabla," that was used to illicitly capture data. He was just a teen when he started working with Gonzalez, according to Wired. It's a shame, because the seven-foot-tall Watt was a terrific student, graduating from high school when he was just 16. One of his first jobs was at Morgan Stanley, where the youngster made $90,000 a year.

Now comes news that Humza Zaman, a former Barclays network programmer, has been sentenced to four years by a court in Boston for his role in the Gonzalez criminal empire. He laundered between $600,000 and $800,000 for Gonzalez, according to media reports. Even though he had technical skills, it appears that Zaman took on rather low-tech jobs in his criminal career, like physically picking up cash in California and shipping it to Florida for pickup by Gonzalez.

For more:
- here's the Wired article
- here's the Register article

Related Articles:
Big moment for end-to-end security?
Lawsuit against Heartland updated
Data breaches to end up in the courts?