Acxiom hacker gets 8 years

Date: February 26, 2006
Source: The Register


A Florida man has been jailed for eight years after being convicted of stealing vast amounts of personal information from Acxiom, one of the world's largest database companies, in order to inflate the value of his spamming firm.

Scott Levine, 46, of Boca Raton, Florida, was found guilty by an Arkansas jury in August of 120 counts of unauthorised access of a protected computer, two counts of access device fraud, and one count of obstruction of justice, the Justice Department announced. The former head of defunct bulk mail outfit Snipermail.com was cleared of 14 conspiracy charges and money laundering at the end of a trial that lasted almost a month.

Prosecutors described the case as the "largest ever invasion and theft of personal data" ever tried. In court, Levine and Snipermail.com were accused of stealing 1.6bn customer records containing details of the names, addresses and emails of millions of Americans from Acxiom databases during a total of 137 hack attacks between January and July 2003. He was not accused of involvement in identity theft but some of the data was resold to a broker for use in a spamming campaign.
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