Man Threatened Spam Attack In $200,000 Extortion Plot 77
52-year-old Anthony Digati was arrested for trying to extort $200,000 from an insurance firm by threatening to spam them with six million emails unless they paid up. Digati said he would use a spam service and his amazing talents as a "huge social networker" to drag the company "through the muddiest waters imaginable" and presumably unfriend everyone. He added that the price would increase to $3 million if they failed to pay up by Monday, according to federal authorities.
Better article (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a Register link to avoid the slimy popups on the linked Fox news site:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/08/cyber_extortion_charges/ [theregister.co.uk]
So I RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, So I got a funny mod above, then I read the article. This guy is $1.2 mil in debt and was provoked by 'becoming "dissatisfied" with the performance of his own universal life insurance policy.' That's sad. But wait, theres more:
""By the way," he added. "Yes, I am crazy. Yes, I am vindictive. Yes, I am extremely upset."
And to prove he wasn't joking, he allegedly included his personal phone number and email address. "
This man is obviously stressed out and possibly mentally ill. Still think he should go to jail though.
Re:Target selection FAIL (Score:5, Informative)
According to the article at the register [theregister.co.uk]. He included his email addres and phone while talking about how evil and vindictive he is. He either didn't have the capacity to make rational decisions or never intended to succeed. Since he was also already in debt 1.2 mil and made his demand precisely 4x his life insurance premium that he was unhappy with I'm thinking it was a little of both.
After reading . . (Score:5, Informative)
1. He wasn't going to spam their email servers, he was going to spam the world to smear their name "drag your company name and reputation, through the muddiest waters imaginable".
2. Looks like he wanted a resolution to the problems he was having because he felt they where doing him wrong. A little different than pure extortion. Basically a "You do me right, or I will tell the whole world of how your wrong me"
He started it would cost them millions to undo what he would do to the companies reputation and that he was very mad at them. This may not be as clear cut a case as the summary makes it.
Now to be honest, I also read it here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/08/cyber_extortion_charges/ [theregister.co.uk]