Canadian accused in Yahoo hack to appear in California court

Karim Baratov is shown in this image from his Instagram account.

A Canadian man accused in a massive hack of Yahoo emails is set to appear in court Tuesday in San Francisco.

Court records show Karim Baratov is scheduled to attend a change of plea hearing in the afternoon.

Baratov was sent to face charges to the U.S. this summer after waiving his right to an extradition hearing in Canada.

He was arrested in Hamilton in March under the Extradition Act after U.S. authorities indicted him and three others -- two of them allegedly officers of Russia's Federal Security Service -- for computer hacking, economic espionage and other crimes.

He was held without bail for months because an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that he was too much of a flight risk to be released.

Yahoo said last year that information from at least 500 million user accounts had been stolen in a cyberattack two years earlier.

Baratov is accused of hacking 80 Yahoo accounts and faces 20 years in prison in the U.S. if convicted.