Florida Man Indicted for Hacking Acxion Computer
A Florida man who ran a company called Snipermail.com Inc. was indicted on Wednesday on charges of breaking into and stealing vast amounts of personal information from Acxiom Corp.'s (ACXM.O: Quote, Profile, Research) computer database in 2002 and 2003, the U.S. Justice Department said.
Scott Levine, 45, of Boca Raton, Florida, was charged in a 144-count indictment with conspiracy, unauthorized access of a computer, access device fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice, department officials said.
The indictment was handed up by a federal grand jury in Little Rock, where the computer marketing company Acxiom is based.
According to the indictment, Levine, who controlled Snipermail, which distributed advertisements via the Internet to e-mail addresses, was part of a scheme to download about 8.2 gigabytes of data from Acxiom's server from April 2002 to August 2003.
Although the indictment charged that a large amount of data had been stolen about a number of individuals, the officials said there was no evidence the data had been misused in a fraudulent scheme.
"We will aggressively pursue those who steal private information from computer networks and make it clear that there are serious consequences for such crimes," Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray said in a statement.
