EMC had quietly made a deal with Popov in 2005, he said, paying him $30,000 by wire transfer and promising a second payment, of $40,000, in four years if the stolen VMware source code didn’t leak. He kept his part of the bargain. The code never leaked, and the fact that the sensitive blueprints for VMware were in the hands of overseas hackers remained a secret from customers and shareholders alike.

But years after that hack, when he approached EMC for the balance of his $70,000 “consulting” fee, the company refused, he says. (EMC declined to comment). By then EMC had spun out VMware as its own company. To Popov, it looked like EMC executives wanted to pretend that the whole thing had never happened.

The sheer disrespect galled him and he wanted revenge. Popov crafted a new identity— “Hardcore Charlie,” a self-described Russian hacktivist aligned with Anonymous. And on April 23, 2012, nearly eight years after it was taken, the stolen VMware code’s first 520 lines appeared on the web.

https://www.wired.com/2016/05/maksym-igor-popov-fbi/