675k Stolen Credit Cards = Ten Years In Jail

wiredmikey writes "A hacker who had been found with more than 675,000 stolen credit card numbers that reportedly led to losses totaling more than $36 million, was sentenced on Friday to 120 months in prison. After pleading guilty on April 21, 2011, Rogelio Hackett Jr., 25, of Lithonia, Georgia, was slapped with a maximum prison sentence and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine. According to court documents, U.S. Secret Service special agents executing a search warrant in 2009 at Hackett's home found more than 675,000 stolen credit card numbers and related information in his computers and email accounts. Hackett admitted in a court filing that since at least 2002, he has been trafficking in credit card information he obtained either by hacking into business computer networks and downloading credit card databases, or purchasing the information from others using the Internet through various carding forums."

Comments

Sounds about right.

[Kenja]

Is this suposed to be controversial or something? Seems a reasonable sentence for the crime, neither inflated or too short.

Re:Sounds about right.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

That's up to 675,000 people he's hurt, so he gets less than two years per hundred thousand people.

On the one hand, that seems really freaking low. On the other, more time won't necessarily help anyone--it won't make him less likely to commit crimes in the future, and the deterrent effect probably isn't great.

Also, there were people at Nuremberg who got ten years, so going much higher than that would be comparatively high by that standard.

Re:Sounds about right.

[sjames]

More properly, he hurt a few banks which insist on a system with virtually no security whatsoever. They then passed the hurt on to up to 675,000 people rather than fixing the problem.

That certainly doesn't make him less guilty, it just makes him the only one who's going to pay for it.

Re:Sounds about right.

[veganboyjosh]

Not been the victim of id theft/fraud much?

Re:Sounds about right.

[hedwards]

He didn't hurt the banks. The banks will pass the loss on to the clients in the form of higher rates. Which is unfortunate because as long as banks can just buy their way out for cheap they aren't likely to invest in the kinds of security necessary to make things more challenging for crooks.

Re:Sounds about right.

[icebike]

No, nothing about the credit card system relies on the belief that the information about you is a secret.

With all due respect to your anti-credit card mentality, most of us get them for convenience, not to remain anonymous or secretive.
We are not victimized by the people we do business with via our cards. We enter into those agreements with full knowledge
that we expect X amount of money to be charged against our card, and we receive X amount of goods or services. We are all adult enough
to realize there is and audit trail and some other uses (fully explained in the TOS) may be made of the information. We are adult enough to realize
no one will do all of this for free.

I absolutely REFUSE to let you EXCUSE the theft of 675 thousand credit card data and 37 million dollars of fraud based on your silly
objection to the TOS that you knew going in.

The system without the fraudsters does not victimize me.
The fraudsters victimize me.

No amount of windmill tilting on your part can change that.

Re:Sounds about right.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the dumbest posts I've ever read on the internet.

1. You're not some messiah for not having a credit card, contrary to your belief. Your failure to manage your money with a credit card is damning evidence of why nobody should bother listening to you on topics related to money. There is not a dichotomy of "has a credit card and makes stupid purchases" versus "does not have a credit card and makes good purchases". Your inability to separate yourself from those in the first category is your own fault, not the card's fault.
2. I frequently make purchases in the $XXXX range. I'm not carrying around a checkbook or that much cash. In the case of a mugging? I call my CC company, they willingly set up no-expense-paid monitoring on my SSN for a year, and then they send me a new number. In the case of cash/checkbook? I'm royally fucked.
3. I don't know who or what David Ramsey is, nor do I care what some radio financial evangelist thinks. If he is truly a "multi millionaire" like you claim, there's a good reason he doesn't need a credit score - whatever he's buying, he can probably afford. The rest of us? Not so lucky.

Re:Sounds about right.

[wickerprints]

You clearly don't understand the nature of credit and its importance in American economics.

The implication in your simplistic view of credit is that it is a mechanism by which one borrows what they cannot afford to pay in full immediately. This is only sometimes true. However, in many cases, credit is used as a method of protecting oneself from risk. Only fools and old grandmothers who stash money under their mattresses think that credit is intrinsically bad. If I pay for something with a card, my creditor provides additional protections in case what I bought is not as advertised, or if there is some other dispute with the merchant. If I paid cash, I have no such protection.

Building a positive credit history is also essential for other purposes, such as renting a property, or securing employment in some sectors. Whether you agree with the practice or not, there is an increasing trend toward using credit history as a measure of financial and social responsibility. Lack of such a history is not considered an advantage--quite the opposite. If you are one of the lucky few who can get through life without having to establish your reputation through such means, then that's great, but that doesn't give you the right to be condescending toward the vast, vast majority of individuals who work hard and manage their credit wisely.

Credit is like food. You can use it in moderation. Excessive use may be an indication of addiction. Trying to avoid it is an illness unto itself.

Re:Sounds about right.

[icebike]

The victim here are the credit card companies themselves. The merchant still gets paid from what I understand, and the credit card company has to eat it. Hence, they are the victims, not you.

Are you Daft?

Credit card companies charge back fraudulent sales to the merchant. They eat little or nothing themselves.
The merchants eat it.

The card holder is still on the hook for $50 or so. More if they delay reporting the loss.
Further, the cost of goods goes up for everyone due to merchants having to eat the loss of the Color TV purchased with a fraudulent card for which they are charged-back.

Re:Sounds about right.

[sg_oneill]

Fun fact. The elderly pensioner who lived next door to me is now homeless after being credit card frauded over the internet. He was an old , not particularly literate, old man.

The company who got broken into didn't do this to him , the thief did.

Stick all the abstractions you like up your own arse and light it on fire for all I can care. The buck stops at a respectable but aged 70 year old man who last I checked is living in a squat with junkies because some punk thought it would be clever to empty his meagre pension and thus make him unable to pay his boarding house rent. Thats the bottom line.

Not nearly enough time

[icebike]

Ten years means he will probably enjoy the fruits of his labor at 35, when he retires with some of that 36 million (or the other multi-millions the feds never found) that he squirreled away off shore.

Re:Not nearly enough time

[hansraj]

Losses incurred probably include things like time lost in canceling a card and issuing new one. The wordings of TFA don't make it clear whether he used all those cards or he just sold it to other criminals, so I have no idea how much this guy directly made.

Rogelio Hackett

[russ1337]

The Mr Hackett was destined to become a hacker...

....researchers have found that people named Dennis are more likely to become dentists. An article, “Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore,” finds that in the U.S. population the names Jerry, Dennis, and Walter rank 39th, 40th, and 41st among male first names. But in the national directory of the American Dental Association there are close to twice as many Dennises (482) as Walters (252) and Jerrys (270). “Similarly, people whose names begin with ‘Geo’ (e.g., George, Geoffrey) are disproportionately likely to do research in the geosciences (e.g., geology).”

http://www.freakonomics.com/2009/04/24/yes-part-ii/

about that fine,

[nimbius]

do you accept visa or mastercard? ;)

How does this sit with the RIAA sentances

[Fluffeh]

Given that 675,000 credit cards is a ten year prison sentence, I do wonder what the same sentence would have been if it was 675,000 tracks he downloaded - and if the two of these sentences are therefore proof that the law is tilted towards a specific type of industry?

sentencing guidelines

[NynexNinja]

The sentencing guidelines have been changed several times over the last 20-30 years regarding the penalties for this type of offence. In the 1980's or 1990's, had this guy been sentenced, he would likely be facing probation or at most a few months in jail, depending on his prior history. These days, they really throw the book at these people and the sentences are on par with murderers and other violent felonies. This man was born about 10 years too late, and was about 10 years older than he should have been when he committed these crimes. Also, I highly doubt the inflated numbers involved in the theft of the credit card data. The credit card companies have been known to dramatically inflate these losses, and then if you ask them for any sort of documentation proving any of it, the real numbers are somewhere around 1% of the original amount they specified. They probably claim this as a deduction on their taxes.