Guilty Plea in AOL Engineer's Address Theft Case

ScentCone writes "Jason Smathers, a former AOL software engineer has pleaded guilty in his theft of 92 million in-house account screen names. He'll be paying $200-400k, and serving a year or two of federal time. Smathers used another employee's account to steal the data, and sold it to a Vegas-based online casino operator. Interestingly, one of the charges was 'interstate transportation of stolen property.'"

Re:Obvious

[YrWrstNtmr]

Do we know for how much he sold the stolen list?

We who RTFA do.
$28,000

Bad, bad lawyer!

[GeneralEmergency]

'transportation of stolen property'

More like 'transportation of copied property'.

No such law.

Re:I'm sorry, but this is crap...

[YrWrstNtmr]

This is a crap example of a big company getting money from this little guy because getting the money from the spammers is nigh impossible.

I know it's a chore to actually read the article, but:
"Smathers told the judge that he accepted $28,000 from someone who wanted to pitch an offshore gambling site to AOL customers, knowing that the list of screen names might make its way to others who would send e-mail solicitations."

It's not like he is an innocent party in this.

"Smathers allegedly sold the list to Sean Dunaway, of Las Vegas, who used it to send unwanted gambling advertisements to subscribers of AOL, the world's largest Internet provider. Charges are pending against Dunaway."

Say what you want about AOL, but they do appear to be going after these clowns.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[KillerDeathRobot]

A prison is supposed to be a place of punishment.

Not necessarily. There are a number of philosophies regarding the reason for prisons; other than punishment, prisons can be said to be places of rehabilitation, places to simply remove the dangerous element from society, and probably other things.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[homer_ca]

Yes, that's why it's called the Dept. of Corrections. Not that they do much rehabilitation or corrections these days, but that is in the name.

Re:Stolen?

[Macadamizer]

"He infringed a trade secret"

You can't infringe a trade secret. You can steal a trade secret, you can misappropriate a trade secret, but you can't infringe a trade secret.

Re:Stolen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? This guy deserves the word "thief."

Just like the RIAA calls the music pirates thieves.

Re:Wait

[afidel]

You are correct. This [cerebalaw.com] site has some good information including some applicable federal statutes involving theft of trade secrets and economic espionage. This guy was looking at up to 10 years in prison and 500K in fines so he got off relativly lightly. I never knew that theft of trade secrets carried criminal attachment, I thought it was purely a civil tort, shows how much you might not know about the law if you're not a lawyer.