One man believed to have been caught by the U.S. Justice Department in last month's "Operation Web Snare" has agreed to a plea bargain with federal prosecutors for violating the controversial CAN-SPAM Act by using others' wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) networks to send unsolicited adult-themed bulk e-mail.
Nicholas Tombros' scheduled September 10 hearing was postponed after a federal judge learned the defense attorney who signed the plea seal had to be hospitalized. A status conference was set for two weeks later, according to several reports.
Tombros was charged with one felony count in late August for driving around Venice, California with his laptop and Wi-Fi antenna hunting for unsecured residential Wi-Fi hot spots, using the ones he found to send what prosecutors believe were thousands of untraceable spam messages pushing adult Websites. The FBI believes Tombros got the e-mail addresses from a credit company where he formerly worked, according to SecurityFocus.com.
Tombros could have been sentenced to 1-3 years in prison because his spam doings included laundering his messages through wireless networks. Prosecutors have not divulged details of the plea deal at this writing, but SecurityFocus.com indicated Tombros is still free to back out of the deal.
CAN-SPAM doesn't criminalize unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail – its lack of an opt-in provision caused critics of the still-young law to nickname it the YOU-CAN-SPAM Act – but it does outlaw most deceptive practices known to be deployed by spammers, including the laundering Tombros did.
On August 26, the Justice Department announced 103 suspects and 117 criminal complaints since June 1 in so-called Operation Web Snare, part of a major crackdown on Internet crime, an operation which included cases involving hacking, phishing, software piracy, and spam.
One of the biggest in the sweep involves Orbit Communications chief executive Jay Echouafni and five others tied to him, with Echouafni under indictment for conspiracy and causing damages to protected computers, accused him and a partner of hiring hackers in three states to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against Orbit competitors. Those attacks, prosecutors have said, caused an estimated $2 million cumulative revenue loss to the victimized operations.
