Guilty Plea in AOL Engineer's Address Theft Case

ScentCone writes "Jason Smathers, a former AOL software engineer has pleaded guilty in his theft of 92 million in-house account screen names. He'll be paying $200-400k, and serving a year or two of federal time. Smathers used another employee's account to steal the data, and sold it to a Vegas-based online casino operator. Interestingly, one of the charges was 'interstate transportation of stolen property.'"

Comments

Re:Obvious

[YrWrstNtmr]

Do we know for how much he sold the stolen list?

We who RTFA do.
$28,000

Re:I'm sorry, but this is crap...

[YrWrstNtmr]

This is a crap example of a big company getting money from this little guy because getting the money from the spammers is nigh impossible.

I know it's a chore to actually read the article, but:
"Smathers told the judge that he accepted $28,000 from someone who wanted to pitch an offshore gambling site to AOL customers, knowing that the list of screen names might make its way to others who would send e-mail solicitations."

It's not like he is an innocent party in this.

"Smathers allegedly sold the list to Sean Dunaway, of Las Vegas, who used it to send unwanted gambling advertisements to subscribers of AOL, the world's largest Internet provider. Charges are pending against Dunaway."

Say what you want about AOL, but they do appear to be going after these clowns.