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Hacker Faces 105 Years In Prison After Blackmailing 350+ Women
redletterdave writes "According to the 30-count indictment released by the Central District of California, 27-year-old hacker Karen 'Gary' Kazaryan allegedly hacked his way into hundreds of online accounts, using personal information and nude or semi-nude photos of his victims to coerce more than 350 female victims to show him their naked bodies, usually over Skype. By posing as a friend, Kazaryan allegedly tricked these women into stripping for him on camera, capturing more than 3,000 images of these women to blackmail them. Kazaryan was arrested by federal agents on Tuesday; if convicted on all 30 counts, including 15 counts of computer intrusion and 15 counts of aggravated identity theft, Kazaryan could face up to 105 years in federal prison."
Seriously, that's it. I'm out of words.
But no doubt he'll take the plea bargain and spend a mere 1% of that in a low security prison, just like Aaron was supposed to.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Now, now - let's not rush to justice until we've had a chance to see the evidence.
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
When they grabbed his computers! UUUCH The keyboards most likely had stuck keys.
I have no problem with this type of scum getting some sort of jailtime. The question is, does the punishment fit the crime? I do not believe that this person will get anywhere near 105 years, especially if there are no priors. Before passing judgement, I think I will wait for a conviction. Is there a precedent for this type of crime with the same kind of scale to it?
Just like in the Anthony Wiener scandal, the clear bit of advice to come out of this: Never, ever, ever transmit pictures of yourself over a computer network with fewer clothes on than you'd wear in public.
I'm sure some people find that kind of thing fun, but the simple fact is that the damage is greater than getting many STDs.
I am officially gone from
Here's a better pro-tip:
Don't blackmail people, or you will raped in prison for the rest of your pathetic life.
If people exercised natural common sense on the Internet, Slashdot would be a very boring place and we wouldn't probably even be having this conversation.
Although 105 years is excessive and the insane US legal system is clearly broken. I think 5 years is perfectly adequate. And of course paying the rest of his life for restitution to his victims.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well the story cited is equally confusing.
How did he hack into hundreds of on line accounts from Facebook Skype, and then find enough to blackmail them?
Seems these women were already posting pictures online in many cases.
But left unexplained is how he hacked into at least three different services in the first place.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Because there are two worlds colliding here in the mind of the average person.
The school of thought that the victim is always at least partly responsible for being conned. There's a sense of superiority a lot of people get when they hear about scams where, because they themselves would never fall prey to a scammer, anyone who does is deficient or incautious.
Anyone charged with a crime involving a computer for more then Solitaire, porn, and recipe hunting must be guilty.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
From the few details I can gather, it's more "social engineering" than "hacking". And you're quite right about them posting the pictures online in the first place... otherwise what would he have gotten to blackmail them with? There's a lot of unanswered questions, but I think there's plenty of lessons for both sides here.
105 years jail for nudie pics.
If he did this in New Zealand and raped the women as well he'd be out of jail in 5 years.
Am i the only one who is confused by the wording of the summary?
Far from it. From the summary, it sounds like he convinced women to strip for him in front of a camera, then used those pictures to blackmail the women into... sending him naked pictures of themselves.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Guys pretending to be girls on the internet? Say it isn't so... Once upon a time I got involved in some rooms on yahoo (back when they existed and had a sense of community) and made friends with a girl who was a regular there - I'd show for her on cam occasionally - "she" didn't have a cam, but talked on mic (I didn't realize you could use a pitch shifter on it). This went on for a while then "she" started getting bossy about it and I refused to do it anymore. Next thing I know, "she" announces to the room that "she" is a he and he fooled us all. He had been recording the cam stuff and uploaded some videos to some porn sites. Luckily I was pretty much just topless in them and not ashamed of my body, but that was the day I decided no more cam. As to those saying how stupid the women are, I would have no issue flashing my boobs at a girlfriend in person or on a cam - based on the story it seems to me that's how he did it and then kept pushing things to get more and more compromising images of them. I unfortunately am jaded and now assume that most females I talk to online that are into girls are just men.
And I took it to mean things happened the other way around...
An ethical approach to justice wouldn't even consider incarceration for non-violent crimes. The ethical approach would focus on restitution to the victims, rather than submission to authority.
He got the initial pictures where a lot of these kinds of creeps do. Hacking email accounts, etc.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
That ship sailed long ago. Coincidentally, our system of 'due process' is basically one massive blackmail racket. If things operated as intended it would be an invaluable tool for the courts and the defendants to provide a win/win. In our completely perverted system charges are trumped up to the maximum (even completely fabricated) levels to force a plea.
He's scum. He preyed on innocents without remorse and deserves punishment. And yet you're going to give him more jail time than he'd get for MURDER?
I hate that I have to stand beside him and say this is wrong. I hate that I have to support someone so despicable. I hate that the flawed system actually makes me support people like Gary Kazaryan.
And yet it's something I must do.
Yeah, sounds more like manipulator, not so much a hacker.
Perhaps what's scariest about this situation is the fact that Kazaryan's alleged online criminality occurred over popular online platforms that millions of people use everyday, like Skype and Facebook, which means you don't have to be deeply entrenched in technology to be taken advantage of.
That too sounds very hyperbolic... Scams happen on "popular communication platforms that billions of people use everyday, like phone and snail mail, which means you don't have to be deeply entrenched in technology to be taken advantage of..."
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
We don't.
All he had to do is pretend to be one of their female friends? Forget the con part. He was able to find 350 women who didn't think it was all that peculiar that one of their friends wanted them to video Skype naked. Who knew?
I really hope they find some way to stick this guy with a lengthy sentence and find some nice PMITA prison for him - so he can be the victim ... hopefully repeatedly.
...or it didn't happen.
Get off your high horse. The 105 years quoted is pure bs. The min/max guidelines in federal court were overturned years ago but people just keep quoting them. This guy will do some time but he'll see the light of day in plenty of time to enjoy life as an ex-felon with something like zero prospects of ever living a productive life with a decent job again. That's the real tragedy here.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
105 does sound a bit extreme but then again he did blackmail 350 people. The methods that he used and the medium really aren't all that relevant. I'm actually surprised that the maximum possible is such a small number. Even if the sentence for blackmail was only 6 months, those charges alone could add up to 175 years. Breaking into other peoples online accounts would just be gravy.
He's a sociopath. He does not possess the basic human foundations of emotion and empathy which allow him to see these women as anything more than objects for him to manipulate to his own ends. He violated them as surely as if he had physically assaulted them. That he committed his crimes with a computer is irrelevant. He can't be fixed. He is exactly the kind of person that we WANT taken out of society. And, to compare him to Aaron Swartz is a peak of intellectual dishonesty.
Seriously, what do you propose as a penalty, or do you propose no penalty?
At some point, when dealing with a group of people on legal issues, you have to have some comprimise. There are amongst us, people who think selling coffee that is "too hot" is criminally negligent. There are others that assume that hot coffee is hot and the buyer is responsible for taking appropriate care after the sale. The law is going to have to establish a common understanding, so that everyone knows what the rules are, even if they don't agree with them.
Taking this to the computer world, there are people that feel they should be able to use their computer, in peace, without having other using it, scaring them into doing stupid things, etc. And people who think anything online is theirs if they can take it or trick someone into giving them access. Are you taking the position that you must understand every way someone can be tricked into doing things in order to use a computer? This seems to be a pretty high bar.
I personally prefer a more "tricking people is bad" whether it involves dodgy product labeling (as by MS in another article on Slashdot), or by jackasses trying to get women to take off their clothes. In this case, I'm thinking something along the lines of 1 month per violation (given that the extent of the damage is embarassment).
I'd like to hear specific ideas from people - either "what he did should be legal" or "what he did should merit punishment along these lines". People saying they are outraged without making specific suggestions aren't really helping.
Further, if MURDER is the standard (you can't do worse than murder, right?) it severely limits what you can do with financial mismanagement, et.al. After all, surely Bernie Madoff isn't WORSE THAN A MURDERER. And if we're talking ruined lives, how do you judge ruined?
Who the fuck cares. Why should this person get less than 105 years anyway? We already have too many people in the labor market, and the threat of prison will keep some in check, while the wildcards out of the way. The government is intended to intimidate and co-oerce compliance. It wouldn't work otherwise.
Look, if you didn't like fascism, maybe you shouldn't've been such a complacent cow over the last 30 years.
Welcome to the New World Order.
So, let me get this straight...
This shmoe could face up to 105 years because of "XX" number of counts of the exact same crime.
By that way of thinking, each perpetrator of the LIBOR fixing scandal committed acts which affected millions or perhaps billions of people. Shouldn't THEIR sentence be something then on the order of millions of years of prison?
And yet, NOT ONE person is going to go to jail for LIBOR. Aaron committed suicide over his potential 50 years, for downloading some crap, but LIBOR guys are going to have their banks pay a small fine, they are still going to get their bonuses, corner offices, mansions, Ferraris, Yachts and hot babes in bikinis.
Dude, if your going to commit a crime, think big -- as in "too big to fail", "too big to prosecute" -- Frankly, if Lance Armstrong had just been Lance Armstrong Bank, he'd still have all his medals, and everyone would still be doing business with him, because they'd have no choice.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
What makes you think charges with up to 105 years in prison will result in a 1 year plea bargain? Are you a lawyer? I think it would be more reasonable to assume that the prosecutor will offer something like 20 years. Incidentally the prosecutor doesn't have to offer anything at all. If they feel the evidence is strong enough they may not offer anything or they might offer something like 40 years without possibility of parole. My understanding is that the really good bargains are only offered for weak cases. The evidence in this case doesn't sound weak. There are too many witnesses.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Wait, he posed as a friend and convinced 350 women to send nude pictures?
That... that just doesn't seem possible.
My cheese filter is going off.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Yeah. In America we know that "potential sentence" is for people who exercise their "right" to a fair trial. If you just roll over for the Kangaroo court and sign a confession, you won't face nearly as bad of punishment.
Well, yeah. He gets jail-time because he did this over a hundred times. Just like the sentence for multiple-homicide is different than a single incident, this is a cumulative sentence for all the charges.
he's being charged for 30 separate counts. If a person were to rob a 30 banks, you wouldn't let them roll all of the sentences into one.
Double the pleasure!
The G
Pics or it didn't happen.
The article says he was a man from Glendale. Also he goes by "Gary" which is a male name.
Karen is much more often a female name in the US but it's not unheard of as a male name. The male form comes from a different root. You know it can sometimes be a male name because it doesn't end with a vowel :).
So yeah. You're sexist for exactly the reason you accused everyone else of being sexist.
What would of happened if these were men rather them women.
Yup, he has an Armenian last name and lives in the Armenian enclave of Glendale.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
The HSBC money laundering case is another good one: That bank was caught laundering billions for drug lords, and there will be no jail time for anybody involved.
I am officially gone from
which is problematic because that's how it should have been in the first place. Put the guy in jail for a yr or two. No need for us to support him in jail for 100 yrs. Craziness.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Yet again a report of someone facing huge prison time by calculating a consecutive rather than a concurrent sentence. He was charged with 30 counts for two different offenses with a total of 105 years. That averages out to 3.5 years per count. Assuming one of the crimes has at least 1 year sentence the other must have at most a 6 year sentence. So if the sentences are served concurrently he would get at most 6 years in prison.
Stop reporting consecutive sentences that are unrealistic.
This is the same "type" of crime, being committed across multiple instances/timeframes/victims.
If somebody breaks into your house today, your neighbours house tomorrow, etc. That's going to be several counts of a given crime (though often pled down).
I agree that the LIBOR guys should be going to jail for a long time though, and Aaron was more the result of the wrong charge overall (wiretap, really?) to exaggerate a crime.
Sung to well-known Limp Bizkit song....
"He did it all for the lookie!, The lookie, the lookie.
So you can take that cookie and stik it up your YEAH.
Stick it up your YEAH!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I have seen women get blackmailed before with the threat of their nudes being leaked by their ex bfs. I've seen women blackmail dudes over pictures they sent of their cocks, taboo perverted fantasies, or cheating on their wives. I have seen girlfriends and boyfriends use the threat of suicide to keep a leash on their partners as well as using the threat of leaking dirty secrets. These scenarios are VERY common. Why is this one guy being singled out? Because he has hundreds of victims?
There are probably millions of victims from hundreds of thousands of blackmailers doing the same or worse. This guy is being singled out probably to bring precedent or as a test case. If they can convict him of 100 years in prison then there are a million others just like him all who can be convicted the same way.
And unlike the whole pedophile hysteria which are more akin to the red scare I think this is a real problem. Blackmail is a real threat and in most of these scenarios there isn't a way to catch the hackers involved. It's one of the trades of blackhats,which also include identity threat, entrapment, swatting.
If something is truly secret it would be wise not to put it on the internet or tell anyone.
Your nudes aren't a secret the moment you transmit them to someone else. Black hats are literally waiting to sniff that stuff out of the air or off of the network. They will impersonate your ex gf or bf to get your nudes. They will even pretend to be your friend or your bf, get your nudes or make a sex tape and use that against you.
None of this is new. These tactics are old hat. The guy in this particular case didn't cover his tracks but black hats of more sophistication usually do. How can we stop Anonymous or some other hacker group from finding our nudes and blackmailing us with it? They have the passwords to all our accounts already and unlike this guy they wont be found.
The only way to be truly safe is to filter what you are willing to upload. If it's truly something which could ruin you then you shouldn't put it on the internet. The internet has changed for the worst when it comes to privacy and it doesn't matter if its the whitehat or blackhat side, neither side respects your privacy.
I've never met a Siobhan, a Gwen or an Ingrid who had a cock. Of their own, I mean.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Does everybody in the world these days have a large stash of naked photos of themselves and strip for their friends of Skype?
People can get away with murder and face less time. Either the punishment for murder and violence needs to go WAY up or the punishment for things like this needs to go down. I'm all for this guy getting punished and put in prison, but up to 105 years for hacking and getting some naked pics of girls over a webcam seems excessive.
http://interserver.net/
This guy should run if he gets the chance. He is seriously fucked. If he was smart enough to pull this off, why was he not smart enough to do it anonymously from public or unprotected wifi or even an internet cafe? Well, unless he did and the FBI have the wrong guy.
The FBI has a huge hardon for any kind of ToS violation crime or really any sort of GeekCrime, and I bet the FBI agent assigned to this case was a pissed off female with an axe to grind. How dare he trick girls into giving him naked photos!
He'll almost certainly be found guilty of the computer intrusion and is likely to be found guilty of the extortion as well, depending on how specific the wording of the federal law is about the monetary nature of any gains. He at least didn't ask for money.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Unauthorized access is "hacking" even if the hack is social engineering, rather than technical.
Learn to love Alaska
... and zero conscience.
Deserves to be looked up, and don't bother to hang on to the keys.
There are ethical hackers (heros really) like Aaron Swartz and then there is this kind of scum.
So you think if Adolf Hitler had been captured, he should have been left out after 25 years, so in 1970 you would have opened the door to his jail and let him walk away free. Oh but wait, would he have gotten time of for good behavior? Nowadays it can rise to as much as 2/3 of the sentence in some countries because jails are full.
Your are bleeding heart who just wants to ignore victims because they are icky and bleed all over the criminal. The 105 year POSSIBLE maximum sentence is there to stop excesses like Norway where a mass murderer can really only be made to do time for ONE murder.
The simple problem is that our legal system in Europe really only works with non-criminals. It is setup on the idea that if the police caution you, you listen. It can't deal with habitual criminals who see a 2nd chance as chance to this time, not get caught! When you realize that for crimes like rape, in Belgium the conviction rate is 1% and yet recidivism rate (which doesn't track re-offend rate but re-convict rate) is 70%, you got to learn to accept that people don't learn.
Bleeding hearts always gush on how about the 3rd strike rule in the US sentences people to life behind bars for stealing cookies. They FORGET to mention that said people already committed TWO violent crimes and then often STRAIGHT out of jail, were caught AGAIN. And remember, arrest and conviction rates are NOT 100%. If a rapist has been convicted TWICE and then is caught doing something again. Chances are very high that in reality he committed many more crimes for which he was not convicted.
I for one do believe SOME people deserve a second chance IF they earned it and a second chance is all you get. I wouldn't even have three strikes. Once chance. Next time, throw away the key.
It is easy to bleed all over the criminal. Remember a documentary about some nun who assisted people on death row. She was very compassionate but did her utmost best to avoid dealing at all with the relatives of the victim because that might influence her... yeah... learning the guy you are crying for beat a child to dead ignoring her cries for mercy tends to do that.
Bleeding hearts think prison is a correctional service. It is not. It is punishment. It is a very heavy stick with a tiny carrot and many criminals don't want the carrot. Removing the stick isn't going to solve anything. The most shocking thing is that the crime rates between different countries don't really differ all that much. Oh... there are statistical differences but if for instance a country decided to not count something as an offense, you can't really use such crimes. For instance, Holland has decriminalized possession of weed but NOT production. The US has criminalization possession so a LOT of people are in jail extra but you can't really count them OR you would ALSO have to acknowledge somehow in your figures that Washington has now legalized pot.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, jail rarely works for rehab because those who enter into it often already did many crimes before that went unreported or didn't result in a conviction and at most you can get them to wish to avoid being caught again. The 3 strike rule shows just how few criminals can even be convinced that maybe after two jail terms, it is wiser to not offend again. And they don't, when a guy is sent down for life for stealing cookies, you can blame the system but you got to accept that you are dealing with a person who knowing full well that he risks life in prison, still couldn't keep his hands of a roll of cookies.
The bleeding hearts are full of compassion and care (for the criminal, never the victims) but they never have a solution. The majority of people simply don't want revolving door criminals.
You can tell a bleeding heart because they talk in dogma's. "At some point you have to give SOME redemption". Why? How many times?
This guy HAD 350 changes to STOP. He didn't have to continue. He could at any point have walked away. He didn't. THAT is why he faces a life time in jail, because he had HUNDREDS of second chances and didn't take them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
seconded
Yeah, I am sure that was the reasoning behind that Norway mass murderer, "oh well, can't get more then 20 years, might as well keep shooting".
Criminals are criminals because they don't think about anyone, not other people and not themselves. Prison is NOT there to stop criminals, it there to STOP non-criminals from becoming criminals and to punish criminals.
It is the passing a traffic jam on the emergency lane. If one person does it and get away, other will feel they have to do it to or feel a fool. BUT if you see that person getting a ticket, you feel vindicated for simply waiting till the jam resolved itself. Society needs to see those who break the rules be punished for it or it will stop obeying the rules. The "me too" mentality is how society breaks down, it is how mobs form and how gang cultures spread.
See drug dealers. If you see a drug dealer as a pathetic individual at constant risk of being send to jail and get his ass pounded, you stay with your boring regular paying job. But if you see a drug dealer as a self-made man with more money then you can dream off, you want to be part of his gang.
It ain't nice but society rarely is but punishment is about getting all the little grain stalks to stay neatly in line by showing them what happens to a grain stalk that gets out of line. Culled like a weed.
And it works... it ain't nice to say but for all the libertarians cry for freedom, how many have actually emigrated to regions with no government? How many of us have moved into a Ghetto where you ain't hassled by the police at night because there is no police at night? Making the daily commute with its eternal traffic jams is a lot easier to put up with when that guy speeding across the emergency lane gets his car impounded. It isn't noble but then who is? Slam the first sheep over the fence in jail and the rest will remain happy in their field and not get run over on the road.
If you want to be depressed, read up on rehabilitation projects and research across the globe. NONE WORK. When talking success rates, they are talking a few percentage difference on recidivism rate, the most deceitful statistic EVER. Remember that recidivism ONLY tracks CONVICTIONS, that make it INTO the records of a person.
Person rapes at 16, records cleared at 18, rapes again. Not a recidivist.
Person rapes again, crime is not reported. Not a recidivist. Not investigated. Not a recidivist. Not prosecuted. Not a recidivist. Not convicted. Not a recidivist. In Belgium, in recent news, it became clear that conviction rate for reported rapes is 1%. Yet even with that LOW LOW LOW figure, recidivism rate is the near universal 70%. What are the chances the remaining 30% are at least party accountable for the remaining 99% of rapes that were reported, let alone the far higher number that went unreported.
Person gets convicted and sent to jail. First day in jail, he is counted as a full NON-recidivist. Every day out of jail he is not convicted, he is counted as a FULL NON-recidivist. If arrested, charged and prosecuted and found guilty all the time UP to actually sentencing and that sentence being recorded, he is counted as a FULL non-recidivist. (Dutch NOS news site had a funny example of this, they reported that 2012 had the lowest amount of murders... by a whole person less then in 2011, but then 2 more murders were committed in the closing days of 2012. hey did NOT redact the article in anyway, you can still find the claim that 2012 had a record low number of murders in their archives with nowhere a correction).
Peron moves to another country and rapes there and is convicted and sentenced, link is NOT made and he continues to be counted as a non-recidivist.
People will try to dazzle you with figures about crime rates and rehabilitation because it is a gigantic business and NOT just in the US. But from country to country, from system to system, the figures remain the same once you start accounting for accounting errors. With recidivism it gets really depressing just
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well, Holland has decriminalized pot. And prostitution is legal and gambling is well regulated and barely an issue. So... are our courts free? Nope.
You see there is a tiny problem in the world. The bleeding hearts don't want to send anyone to jail and the right wingers don't want to pay for it. The first act of VVD/CDA with support of PVV was to close 3 jails. Next government VVD/PvDA closed yet more.
A legal system is expensive and NOBODY wants to pay for it. And the overburnded systems as they are ALREADY legalize a LOT of stuff, stolen bike in Amsterdam? Fill in a form, nothing will be done. Alarm goes off in an office block with a video link showing the burglars still inside. Police tells the caretaker to go take look. Check your local system, for every budget increase there are ten cutbacks. All so we can have more and more managers telling us the system ain't working at outrageous salaries rather then cops on the streets and judges on benches.
A working society is an expensive society and the best way to get elected is to promise tax cuts. That got to conflict sooner or later.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'd answer that, but I'm confused by the wording of your post. Who's "i"?
Since there is no English word "i" it is perfectly obvious that it's a typo for "I". I'm as keen a grammar/spelling nazi as anyone, but since there isn't the slightest doubt about what he meant, it is incredibly pedantic to complain about it on a post to an internet forum.
I might as well criticise you for using the informal "I'd" and "I'm" in writing that is not quoting direct speech.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it