Several people have asked me what I think about the AP story, Hacker Gets Record Sentence for a Computer Crime. The story reports:
One of three Michigan men who hacked into the national computer system of Lowe’s hardware stores and tried to steal customers’ credit card information was sentenced Wednesday to nine years in federal prison.
The government said it is the longest prison term ever handed down in a computer crime case in the United States.
It’s hard to be sure based on the press reports, but my sense is that there really isn’t anything interesting about this case. First, a technical point: this is not the longest prison term ever handed down in a computer crime case. It’s probably the longest for a computer intrusion crime, but there are lots of computer crimes that don’t involve computer intrusions. For example, there have been many longer sentences for Internet-related child sex offenses.
In terms of the sentence, it seems that Salcedo pled guilty to wire fraud and hacking. His sentence would be determined like any other sentence for a white-collar crime; the law treats all white-collar crimes as the same (this is an enormous overgeneralization, but should work for these purposes). I don’t know the details of the plea, but assuming the Court applied the sentencing guidelines the range of punishment would be determined by the dollar value loss of the crime attempted. When a hacker is picking up credit card numbers, he can get a lot of card numbers; a lot of card numbers means lots of damage and a higher punishment. That’s what explains the 9-year sentence. According to earlier press reports, there was a possible cooperation deal, but I gather it fell through.
Hard to know more without really digging into it. Thanks to Scott and the little law.com blurb thing over to the right for the link.
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