Facts: In March 2005, Jeanson James Ancheta was indicted on charges of reaping profits from the utilization of “botnets” to destructively attack and send high numbers of spam to vulnerable computers through the internet. The defendant, aged 21, at the time, was a member of the “botmaster underground” which was a network of persons carrying out such malicious cyber crimes. The indictment charges included two counts of conspiracies, attempts to cause havoc to secured computers, actual damage to unprotected computers used by the federal government in the defense department and gaining unauthorized access to secure computers to facilitate fraud and money laundering. In total, the defendant was indicted on seventeen counts of cyber-related crimes.
Issues: The issue raised is whether or not the defendant would be convicted of all the seventeen counts of charges made against him during the indictment.
Holding: It was held that the allegations made against the defendant were indeed true. The defendant was thus convicted of all the charges made against him by the Supreme Court. Following his convictions, Ancheta was imprisoned for 57 months, the longest prison term for an individual found guilty of spreading computer viruses. In addition to the imprisonment, the defendant was forced to hand over the proceeds from his illicit activities – $60,000 cash, BMW, and computer paraphernalia. In addition, Ancheta was forced to disburse close to $15,000 to the Weapons Branch of the United States Naval Air Warfare Center located in China Lake as well as the Defense Information Systems Agency because their networks were deliberately destroyed by Ancheta’s illegal activities. It was held that if the defendant avoided disbursing these payments, his personal properties worth the amount specified above would be forfeited to the federal government.
Reasoning: The jury argued that the defendant conspired to violate the Computer Fraud Abuse Act as well as the CAN-SPAM Act, caused havoc to computer networks of the national defense department of the federal government, and gained access to protected computers without the permission of the owners. It was reasoned that the defendant made approximately thirty distinct transactions which earned him more than $3,000. The transactions involved the sale of his botnets to other users of computers who would then utilize the botnets to carry out distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks and to launch spam and unsolicited emails on other computers. Besides selling the botnets to the computer users, Ancheta also advised them on how to carry out the illegal activities effectively.
Relating to the computer fraud scheme, the defendant generated for himself and his co-conspirators an income of more than $107,000 through advertising affiliates. This they did by downloading adware to approximately 400,000 vulnerable computers controlled by Ancheta. He avoided being detected by the advertising affiliate companies by changing the times of download and the rates of installation of the adware. From the proceeds made, Ancheta purchased additional servers which he used to carry out his unlawful activities.
Rule: The reasoning and holding were based on the Computer Fraud Abuse Act as well as the CAN-SPAM Act whprohibitsibit persons from carrying out computer and internet-related activities that would cause damage or violate privacy and property rights of other people.
Concurring judges: Judge Gary Klausner, who also delivered the opinion of the court
Dissenting justices: There were no dissenting justices.
References
Findlaw.com. State v. v. Ancheta, 05-1060 (C.D. CAL. 2006).