**US Lawyer Accuses UK Intel Firm of Paying for Hack Operation Against Him**

In a shocking turn of events, a New York attorney has accused a British private intelligence firm of paying mercenary hackers who tipped the scales in his opponents' favor during a high-profile court battle.

Daniel Feldman, a prominent US lawyer, made the allegations against London-based investigations firm Vantage Intelligence in a legal motion filed in Manhattan federal court. According to Feldman, Vantage paid the spies who intercepted privileged communications with his attorneys around 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Feldman's lawsuit centers on a court battle he had with Vantage's clients, a group of companies tied to the defunct Russian oil giant Yukos, over allegations of self-dealing. Feldman denied wrongdoing but was found liable for breaching his fiduciary duties to several of the Yukos-related entities in 2019.

The jury found no evidence of harm and fined Feldman a nominal $5, while his law license was suspended for a year as a result of the verdict. Now, Feldman is seeking to have the judgment thrown out, arguing that the case was irrevocably tainted by hacking.

Feldman's motion comes on the heels of two Reuters investigations in 2022 and 2023, which exposed how litigants around the world were being hacked by their opponents in high-profile cases using mercenary spies based out of India. Feldman was one of thousands of cyberespionage targets identified by Reuters during its reporting.

In his filing, Feldman claims that federal prosecutors in Manhattan privately confirmed that his emails had been breached ahead of the 2023 sentencing of Israeli private eye Aviram Azari, a key figure in the hack-for-hire industry. The Justice Department declined to comment on the matter.

Azari billed Vantage $635,000 for the hacking services at the time, Feldman alleged, adding that the spying tipped the scales of justice. "Email was my primary means of communication with my attorneys," Feldman said in the motion. "It belies common sense that it did not create an unfair advantage for the plaintiffs."

Feldman's allegations are part of a growing list of litigants who have used evidence of hacking to challenge legal judgments following Reuters' reporting. Last month, Israeli investor Ofer Levin said in legal documents filed in Florida federal court that his former business partner had deployed Indian hackers against him in an Israeli arbitration battle he lost.

Similarly, Missouri-based aviation executive Farhad Azima had his British fraud judgment thrown out after showing that his legal opponent had covered up its use of Indian hackers to steal his emails. He also settled parallel lawsuits in London and New York against his opponent's law firm, Philadelphia-based Dechert.

While Vantage has not commented on the allegations, the company is facing increased scrutiny in the private intelligence world following its recent appointment of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and an ally of President Donald Trump, to serve on its board of advisors.

Prince is not named in Feldman's motion, but there's no suggestion that he had any involvement with the hacking. Messages left with Prince and his lawyer were not returned.

The case highlights the growing concern over the use of hacking as a tool in high-stakes litigation, and the need for greater transparency and accountability from private intelligence firms operating in this space.