(CN) - The Justice Department announced Wednesday indictments against a dozen Chinese nationals, claiming they worked to steal data from a swath of U.S.-based critics and dissidents of the People's Republic of China.

According to three separate indictments filed in Manhattan and Washington, China's Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Public Security used an extensive network of private companies and contractors in China to conduct unauthorized computer hacks in the United States.

One of those companies is called Anxun Information Technology Co. Ltd., also known as i-Soon, which the Justice Department says hacked a wide number of email accounts, cell phones, servers and websites of federal and state government bodies in the U.S., as well as New York-based newspapers and wide-reaching religious organizations with millions of members.

"i-Soon's victims were of interest to the PRC government because, among other reasons, they were prominent overseas critics of the PRC government or because the PRC government considered them threatening to the rule of the Chinese Communist Party," the Manhattan indictment says.

The government claims i-Soon worked with at least 43 different Chinese government bureaus and charged between approximately $10,000 and $75,000 for each email inbox it successfully broke into. According to the indictment, the private company conducted hacks sometimes at China's request and sometimes at its own direction, attempting to sell the information later.

The government points to one instance in which Yin Kecheng, one of the hackers, told an associate he wanted to "mess with the American military" and "break into a big target" in September 2013 so he could earn enough money to buy a car.

According to the indictment, Kecheng used mapping software to identify network vulnerabilities and stolen network credentials to consistently access his victims' private servers.

Once Kecheng and other hackers gained access to the networks, the government says they would install malware to maintain persistent access and then exfiltrate the stolen data to servers under their control.

"State-sponsored hacking is an acute threat to our community and national security," Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Matthew Podolsky said in a statement. "For years, these 10 defendants - two of whom we allege are PRC officials - used sophisticated hacking techniques to target religious organizations, journalists and government agencies, all to gather sensitive information for the use of the PRC."

The government also claims i-Soon trained PRC employees to hack independently and offered a variety of hacking methods for sale to its customers, including one platform that sent email phishing attacks, created filed with malware that can access victims' computers and cloned websites of victims to induce them to send personal information.

The Justice Department also announced the seizure of a Virtual Private Server account and multiple internet domains connected to the Chinese hackers' activity.

"The defendants in these cases have been hacking for the Chinese government for years, and these indictments lay out the strong evidence showing their criminal wrongdoing," U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr., said in a statement.

All of the hackers remain at large. The U.S. Department of State announced a reward of up to $10 million for information about them.

Source: Courthouse News Service