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Man Gets 10 Years For VoIP Hacking

Posted by timothy on from the just-think-what-that-is-in-minutes dept.

angry tapir writes "A US court has sentenced a Venezuelan man to 10 years in prison for stealing and then reselling more than 10 million minutes of Internet phone service. Edwin Pena, 27, was convicted in February of masterminding a scheme to hack into more than 15 telecommunications companies and then reroute calls to their networks at no charge. He must also pay more than US$1 million in restitution, and will be deported once his sentence is served."

9 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Free calls by fvandrog · · Score: 5, Funny

    Free calls for all US prisoners shortly.

  2. Stupid criminal... by ProdigyPuNk · · Score: 4, Funny

    Pena is the first person to be charged by U.S. authorities with VoIP hacking, but he almost avoided prosecution. He skipped bail after his arrest, and was only captured after his Mexican girlfriend turned him in in early 2009.

    I've said it before and I'll say it again. NEVER, EVER let your girlfriend know what is going on if you are commiting crimes/running from the law/etc. It gets you in trouble every time.

    1. Re:Stupid criminal... by delinear · · Score: 5, Funny

      I've said it before and I'll say it again. NEVER, EVER let your girlfriend know what is going on. It gets you in trouble every time.

      FTFY

  3. Interesting criminal justice system in the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Spend money 'punishing' him and then immediately deport him. Rehabilitation seems to have no meaning there.

    1. Re:Interesting criminal justice system in the US by CrashandDie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Then why bother spending some $800k on him in the first place if he's not wanted? So the next country gets a nice guy? Yeah. Right.

      Either give him a few years and make a good citizen out of him, or kick him out of the country. Doing both is just plain stupid.

    2. Re:Interesting criminal justice system in the US by kevinNCSU · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe because "Come to our country, commit crimes, and simply get asked nicely to leave" isn't a sign we're interested in putting up? It's called a penal system for a reason. Rehabilitation has always been a tertiary goal behind punishment and deterrence. That doesn't mean it's not important, but you're acting like it's the entire point of a prison sentence, which it absolutely is not.

  4. Why bother serving sentence? by danking · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The one thing I don't understand is why have him actually serve his sentence? Doesn't this just cost people more money in the end. It may be worth while to have him stay until he has re-payed the $1 million, assuming he even has the ability to re-pay the money but why not just deport him right away.

    1. Re:Why bother serving sentence? by delinear · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well jail time is theoretically about rehabilitation, but in practice it's about deterrence. It wouldn't deter anyone from following in his footsteps if he was sent home without serving jail time (I think the $1m repayment part is just wishful thinking). Mind you, how do you rehabilitate someone whose crime is purely financial in a society that's largely focused on the pursuit of money, or prevent others copying him? In that case his "crime" was merely being caught, and every criminal assumes he's smarter than the last guy and won't get caught, so the effectiveness of such a sentence even as a deterent is doubtful.

  5. Computer Fraud and Wire Fraud, Some Hacking by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Man gets 10 years for felony commercial theft of service".

    I believe the actual charges were one count of computer fraud and one count of wire fraud. Which has a pretty serious maximum punishment.

    There. FTFY.

    No hacking involved here; nothing to see; move along.

    Well, I don't know if I'd agree there was no hacking involved. It sounds like he used someone in Washington state named Moore to run port scans on all the big routers for VoIP hardware. Moore (serving two years) would then brute force attack these routers for login information. Pena dumped Moore twenty large and then acted as a salesman. After selling the phone service, Pena would reprogram the vulnerable networks so they would accept his rogue telephone traffic. Pena didn't seem to do much hacking, Moore was apparently just a brute force hacker that preyed on stupid VoIP companies who used four number prefixes as passwords.

    I think the general public considers port scanning and brute force attacks to be hacking. At least the news reports it as such.

    --
    My work here is dung.