According to court papers filed in a federal court in Boston on Friday, the 28-year-old Miami computer hacker, Albert Gonzalez, who allegedly was the mastermind behind two of the biggest identity theft in the US history, has agreed to plead guilty to related charges.

Gonzalez has been accused of architecting that theft of over 40 million credit card and debit card records from major retail chains, thereby resulting in deceitful transactions to the tune of hundreds of thousands dollars.

With the currently-in-jail ex-government informant agreeing to plead guilty to 19 felony counts in Massachusetts, the pending charges against him in federal court in New York will also be resolved, as he would be pleading guilty to that too.

While the Massachusetts indictment pertains to Gonzalez's tapping into the computer networks of companies like TJ Maxx, Barnes & Noble and OfficeMax, a second indictment related to stealing of credit-card information from 11 Dave & Buster's restaurants.

Under the plea deal, prosecutors will likely recommend a prison sentence of 15 to 25 years for Gonzales.

Talking about Gonzalez and his self-taught computer hacking ability, Scott Christie, an ex-federal prosecutor in the ShadowCrew investigation, said: "He was in many respects an empire builder. He was interested in bringing in younger and inexperienced members and training them in this type of criminal conduct!"