Bits Blog: Lulzsec Hacker Pleads Guilty

6:27 p.m. | Updated with additional comments from prosecutors and the defendant.

Jeremy Hammond of Chicago, a member of the Lulzsec hacking collective, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to attack a global intelligence firm.

As a crowd of supporters watched, Mr. Hammond, 28, pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to engage in computer hacking.

Chicago Police Department, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Jeremy Hammond pleaded guilty to hacking charges.

Mr. Hammond was arrested last year with the help of Hector Xavier Monsegur, the hacker better known by his hacking moniker Sabu. Mr. Monsegur was arrested and subsequently helped law-enforcement officials infiltrate Lulzsec, an offshoot of Anonymous, the loose hacking collective that has supported an ever-shifting variety of causes, ranging from democracy in the Middle East to justice for victims of sexual crimes.

Officials accused Lulzsec of defacing Web sites, stealing confidential information and putting victims temporarily out of business. Mr. Hammond was arrested in connection with a breach of the company Stratfor Global Intelligence Service and charged with stealing credit card information and using some of it to make more than $700,000 in fraudulent charges.

The authorities had managed, with Mr. Monsegur’s help, to persuade Mr. Hammond and Stratfor’s other attackers to use one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s own computers to store data stolen from Stratfor. The hackers complied and transferred “multiple gigabytes of confidential data,” including 60,000 credit card numbers, records for 860,000 Stratfor clients, employees’ e-mails and financial data to the F.B.I.’s computers, according to the complaint against Mr. Hammond.

Many of those e-mails later appeared on Wikileaks.

Mr. Hammond told Judge Loretta A. Preska of Federal District Court in Manhattan that in 2011 and 2012 he had gained unauthorized access to Stratfor’s computer systems and several other groups, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Virtual Academy, the public safety department in Arizona, and Vanguard Defense Industries, which makes drones.

“As part of each of these hacks I took and disseminated confidential information,” Mr. Hammond told the judge. “I knew what I was doing was against the law.”

Later, Mr. Hammond issued a statement saying that he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hack Stratfor, partly to avoid the possibility of being charged with hacking groups other than Stratfor.

“Now that I have pleaded guilty it is a relief to be able to say that I did work with Anonymous,” Mr. Hammond wrote in a statement on a Web site run by his supporters. “I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors.”

In a written statement, Preet Bharara,  the United States attorney in Manhattan, said, “While he billed himself as fighting for an anarchist cause, in reality, Jeremy Hammond caused personal and financial chaos for individuals whose identities and money he took and for companies whose businesses he decided he didn’t like.”

Mr. Hammond faces up to 10 years in prison, prosecutors said, and has agreed to pay up to $2.5 million in restitution.

Before his arrest last year, Mr. Hammond had already served 24 months in prison for hacking into a political group’s computer server and stealing credit card numbers in 2006.

Judge Preska said that Mr. Hammond will be sentenced in September.

Ex-Programmer Pleads Not Guilty in Long Island Computer Hacking Case

For years he commuted from his home in Smithtown, N.Y., on Long Island, to his job as a software programmer at Spellman High Voltage Electronics Corporation, a manufacturer of industrial power supplies in nearby Hauppage. His specialty was known as enterprise resource planning.

But after Mr. Meneses was passed over for promotions, he was upset enough to announce his resignation, giving two weeks’ notice. Before his final day in January 2012, colleagues caught him copying files from his computer to a flash drive, the authorities said. They cut off his access to company servers.

Soon odd things started happening. Employees at Spellman began reporting that they were unable to process routine transactions and were receiving error messages. An applicant for his old position received an e-mail from an anonymous address, warning him, “Don’t accept any position.” And the company’s business calendar was changed by a month, throwing production and finance operations into disorder.

That account was laid out by federal prosecutors on Thursday, who said that Mr. Meneses, using stolen passwords and his high-level knowledge of the computer system, had hacked Spellman’s servers and in three weeks caused enough mayhem to cost his former employer more than $90,000. “The defendant engaged in a 21st-century campaign of cyber-vandalism and high-tech revenge,” said Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District. Mr. Meneses was arrested Thursday.

Investigators traced the e-mail account used to warn off the applicant for his old job to an Internet protocol address that belonged to Mr. Meneses’s new employer. They traced the changes to the company calendar to a hotel in Cary, N.C., a short distance from Mr. Meneses’s new job. Records from the hotel showed that he was staying there at the time of the online attack.

Mr. Meneses, 41, officially denied the allegations in Federal District Court in Central Islip on Thursday and was released on $50,000 bond. He faces up to 10 years in prison. A lawyer for Mr. Meneses, Tracey E. Gaffey, declined to comment.

Jennifer Sultan Pleads Guilty to Selling Prescription Drugs

In the years since, that temporary flush of wealth evaporated and Ms. Sultan, 38, developed an addiction to prescription painkillers.

On Friday, she sat handcuffed in a courtroom at State Supreme Court in Manhattan. In exchange for a promise of a four-year prison sentence, she pleaded guilty to selling prescription painkillers and conspiring to sell a firearm.

She was arrested last July and accused of being part of a ring that sold prescription drugs and guns. Four others arrested with Ms. Sultan had already pleaded guilty. One, Nicholas Mina, a former New York City police officer, agreed to serve more than 15 years in prison as part of a plea bargain under which he admitted stealing guns from his colleagues’ precinct house lockers and selling them. Mr. Mina was also addicted to prescription painkillers.

Though Ms. Sultan’s lawyer said she had hoped for less than four years, she faced 15 years to life in prison on the top count against her and the potential for more prison time on other charges. She said little in court but smiled broadly several times as she spoke quietly with her lawyer, Frank Rothman.

“She was happy to be done with it, but she was not happy with the sentence,” Mr. Rothman said afterward.

Ms. Sultan grew up in West Long Branch, N.J., five miles north of Asbury Park, and graduated from New York University in 1996. She and her boyfriend at the time, Adam Cohen, worked at a company, Live Online, that was an early pioneer in live streaming events on the Internet.

After the sale of Live Online, efforts by Ms. Sultan and Mr. Cohen to start other technology companies failed. Ms. Sultan explored other interests, including acupuncture and holistic health.

Early last year, a city narcotics investigator discovered an advertisement Ms. Sultan had placed on Craigslist offering prescription painkillers for sale. She and Mr. Cohen were still living in the penthouse loft near Union Square that they bought after the sale of Live Online.

Five times from February through June, she sold pills to an undercover officer, according to her indictment. One sale took place at the Starbucks on Union Square. In another, she sold 183 oxycodone tablets to the officer for $4,400 at a Starbucks in the Flatiron district near the school where she was studying acupuncture.

A separate investigation into the ring that sold stolen guns and pain medication picked up Ms. Sultan sending a text message to the man accused of being the ringleader, Ivan Chavez, saying she wanted to sell him a .357 Magnum handgun for $850, according to a separate indictment obtained by the Manhattan district attorney.

Mr. Chavez was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Ms. Sultan and Mr. Cohen, who was not accused of participating in the drug and guns ring, filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Last August, the bankruptcy judge ordered them to vacate the loft to allow a bankruptcy trustee to sell it. The 5,600-square-foot loft is still listed for sale at just under $6 million.

She has been incarcerated since her arrest in July because she was unable to raise $85,000 for bail. With credit for good behavior and time served since her arrest, Ms. Sultan could be released from prison in about two years.

Chinese Businessman Pleads Guilty in Stolen Software Case

The sophisticated software was stolen from an estimated 200 American manufacturers and sold to 325 black market buyers in 61 countries from 2008 to 2011, prosecutors said in court filings. U.S. buyers in 28 states included a NASA engineer and the chief scientist for a defense and law-enforcement contractor, prosecutors said.

Corporate victims in the case included Microsoft, Oracle, Rockwell Automation,, Agilent Technologies, Siemens, Delcam, Altera Corp and SAP, a government spokesman said.

U.S. officials and the Chinese man's lawyer, Mingli Chen, said the case was the first in which a businessman involved in pirating industrial software was lured from China by undercover agents and arrested.

The businessman, Xiang Li, of Chengdu, China, was arrested in June 2011, during an undercover sting by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents on the Pacific island of Saipan, an American territory near Guam.

Video from the undercover meeting in Saipan, filed as evidence in court, is expected to be made public during a press conference Tuesday by John Morton, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Charles M. Oberly III, the U.S. Attorney for Delaware.

Li, 36, originally charged in a 46-count indictment, pleaded guilty late Monday to single counts of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright violations and wire fraud.

"I want to tell the court that what I did was wrong and illegal and I want to say I'm sorry," Li told U.S. District Judge Leonard P. Stark during a 90-minute hearing in federal court. The Chinese citizen spoke through a translator.

In a court filing, prosecutors David Hall and Edward McAndrew said the retail value of the programs Li sold on the black market exceeded $100 million.

During the hearing, Li told U.S. District Judge Leonard Stark that he disputes that figure. After the hearing, his lawyer said Li did not realize the retail value of what he was selling until he was caught and plans to present his own estimate at sentencing, which is set for May 3, he said.

In recent years, U.S. officials have targeted software pirates overseas but bringing them to the United States has proved difficult.

In one of the largest copyright cases, U.S. prosecutors last year charged seven people, including Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, with racketeering conspiracy and copyright violations. The indictment alleges that Dotcom, who lives in New Zealand, ran an organization that earned $175 million selling an estimated $500 billion worth of pirated movies, TV shows and other entertainment media. Dotcom is fighting extradition from New Zealand.

EXPENSIVE SOFTWARE

The Li case involves sophisticated business software, not entertainment software, and thus small quantities of higher-priced products. The retail value of the products Li pirated ranged from several hundred dollars to more than $1 million apiece. He sold them online for as little as $20 to $1,200, according to government court filings.

At one point, Crack99.com and Li's other sites offered more than 2,000 pirated software titles, prosecutors said.

Li trolled black market Internet forums in search of hacked software, and people with the know-how to crack the passwords needed to run the program. Then he advertised them for sale on his websites. Li transferred the pirated programs to customers by sending compressed files via Gmail, or sent them hyperlinks to download servers, officials said.

"He was pretty proud of himself," Chen said of his client's business acumen. "He did not realize it was such a big crime."

Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Homeland Security Investigations learned of Li's enterprise after an unidentified U.S. manufacturer noticed his company's software for sale on crack99.com.

Working undercover for 18 months beginning in early 2010, the U.S. agents made at least five purchases from Li. These included pirated versions of "Satellite Tool Kit" by Analytical Graphics Inc. of Exton, Penn., a product prosecutors said is "designed to assist the military, aerospace and intelligence industries through scenario-based modules that simulate real-world situations, such as missile launches, warfare simulations and flight trajectories." Agents bought software worth $150,000 retail for several thousand dollars.

Agents lured Li from China to the U.S. territory of Saipan under the premise of discussing a joint illicit business venture. At an island hotel, Li delivered counterfeit packaging and, prosecutors said, "Twenty gigabytes of proprietary data obtained unlawfully from an American software company." Officials did not identify the company in court documents.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Malcolm Harris Pleads Guilty Over 2011 March

After more than a year of arguing in court papers that police officers had led hundreds of Occupy Wall Street marchers on to the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge and then arrested 700 of them, a Brooklyn writer’s own Twitter postings showed that he had, in fact, heard warnings from the police to stay off the road.

“They tried to stop us, absolutely did not want us on the motorway,” the writer, Malcolm Harris, posted during the march on Oct. 1, 2011, according to passages read by a prosecutor in court. “They tried to block and threaten arrest. We were too many and too loud. They backed up until they could put up barricades.”

Those postings and others by Mr. Harris, 23, were described publicly for the first time on Wednesday in Criminal Court in Manhattan as Mr. Harris pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.

The case had become a significant focus of attention for its involvement of posts to social networking sites and legal arguments over who controls that material. Mr. Harris and Twitter had opposed a subpoena of Twitter for Mr. Harris’s postings, which had been pushed off his public page by more recent postings.

In September, Twitter complied with a court order to turn over thousands of Mr. Harris’s archived postings to Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. of Criminal Court in Manhattan, who reviewed the messages himself and later turned over a few pages to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors wanted the postings because they suspected the notes would contradict what they expected to be Mr. Harris’s defense: that the police had baited people onto the roadway of the bridge. Mr. Harris’s lawyer, Martin R. Stolar, voiced that theory in motions he filed in court.

“Destined for Brooklyn, the marchers began crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on the pedestrian walkway,” Mr. Stolar wrote in court papers last year. “When their numbers grew too numerous, the police directed them onto the vehicular roadway, announcing through a barely audible bullhorn that a march on the roadway was not permitted.”

Faced with the messages that he acknowledged would be detrimental to his case, Mr. Harris offered to plead guilty on Wednesday, as a trial was about to begin, to disorderly conduct, a violation that carries a penalty of up to 15 days in jail.

Judge Sciarrino withdrew an early offer of not sentencing Mr. Harris to anything beyond the nine hours he was held after his arrest.

Lee Langston, an assistant district attorney, requested a sentence of 10 days’ community service, arguing that Mr. Stolar had wasted judicial resources by representing that marchers had not heard warnings from police officers on the bridge, something his client’s writing contradicted.

“I had no idea what was in those tweets until about a month ago,” Mr. Stolar said. “If you really want to get into it,” he continued, before being interrupted by the judge.

“Not really,” Judge Sciarrino said. “Nor are you doing any service to your client.”

The judge offered Mr. Harris a choice of three days of community service, or six days if Mr. Harris wanted to pick a program himself.

“I’ll take the latter,” Mr. Harris said.

Outside court, Mr. Stolar and Mr. Harris said the charge against Mr. Harris was not the focus of their concerns. They were more focused on appealing the ruling that approved the subpoena of material from Twitter.

“Setting the legal precedent for how this material is going to be used is much more important than six days of community service,” Mr. Harris said.

WWE Star Cameron Pleads Not Guilty To Driving Drunk In Florida

WWE Star Cameron
Pleads Not Guilty To Driving Drunk In Florida

 

WWE superstar Cameron is ADAMANT -- she did not drive her car while sloshed on martinis outside the Tampa airport ... pleading not guilty to DUI today.

As we previously reported, Cameron -- real name Ariane Andrew -- was arrested back in August? on suspicion of DUI. The police report said Cameron was traveling with a male passenger who told cops they had been drinking martinis before getting in the car.

The report says Cameron blew a .20 ... more than twice the legal limit in Florida.

The report also says the WWE diva allegedly offered cops a $10,000 bribe to let her go ... which clearly didn't pan out.

A pre-trial hearing is set for October 23.