Hacking Neighbor Pleads Guilty On Death Threats and Porn

wiredmikey writes "Another good reason to make sure your wireless is secured! 'Barry Vincent Ardolf of Blaine, Minnesota pleaded guilty to hacking into his neighbor's wireless Internet system and posing as the neighbor to make threats to kill the Vice President of the United States. Just two days into his federal trial in St. Paul, Ardolf stopped the trial to plead guilty. According to the US Department of Justice, in his plea agreement, Ardolf, 45 years-old, was indicted on June 23, 2010, admitted that in February of 2009, he hacked into his neighbor's wireless Internet connection and created multiple Yahoo.com email accounts in his neighbor's name." Ardolf's guilty plea included child porn possession, as well as the death threats.

Comments

What's not to like?

[seebs]

Death threats against the vice president, breaking into his neighbor's wireless... But no, he didn't stop there. Child porn.

I wonder if some company that has a wireless security technology hired this guy to make their product look necessary.

Re:What's not to like?

[MoonBuggy]

The article is rather sparse on details, but what interests me is that Ardolf didn't succeed in his "this'll get the dude in trouble" plan; what led the police to believe that the access point had been 'hacked'? What security was used, for that matter? Were there logs?

The guilty plea certainly makes it seem like this is a case where computer fraud was handled correctly by the system, and since the courts often seem to make the mistake that 'IP address == person' it'd be good to see how they went about distinguishing the actual criminal from the victim here.

Re:What's not to like?

[Capsaicin]

Unsecured doesn't imply incompetent - there are people who happily leave a public WiFi connection to the net which is securely isolated from their internal network.

In fact, if you intend doing anything online which might raise the ire of authorities, "securing" your WiFi is actually quite foolish. What you are effectively doing is removing a reasonable doubt that activity over the connection is your activity.

Re:What's not to like?

[icebike]

The article is rather sparse on details, but what interests me is that Ardolf didn't succeed in his "this'll get the dude in trouble" plan; what led the police to believe that the access point had been 'hacked'? What security was used, for that matter? Were there logs?

Chances are it was wide open, no security. The guy does not sound bright enough to have even hacked WEP, let alone anything stronger.

With that fact in hand, and finding no evidence that the neighbor had any knowledge or ill intent, your circle of suspects is limited to what you can measure with a standard hard ware store carpenters tape measure.

The case went to trial - and he folded.

[westlake]

Don't be so quick. Many innocent people plead guilty because they've been poorly advised by a public defender. A plea of guilty doesn't mean the person was guilty. It means that a deal was offered and the suspect had no faith in his defense at trial.

Where does it say he had a public defender?

He'd refused a more favorable plea deal last summer, insisting on fighting the government's case against him. But after two days of trial -- including Thursday's testimony from expert witnesses who showed the elaborate means Ardolf used to harass and smear neighbors who'd once called the police on him -- he stopped denying what he had done.
"The reality of it became apparent to him that this was going to happen and he didn't want to perpetuate his own distress or the pain for the victims," Ardolf's lawyer, Seamus Mahoney, said Friday. Vengeful neighbor in Blaine pleads to Biden threat, hacking

Seamus Mahoney is a criminal defense attorney with a state-wide practice in Minnnesota.