Two men handed suspended jail sentences for data theft in Japan
Two men were given suspended jail sentences Friday for stealing personal data of subscribers to Japanese broadband services provider Softbank Corp. in an effort to extort money from the company.
Yutaka Tomiyasu, 24, and Takuya Mori, 35, were arrested in May for illegally accessing personal information on Softbank customers after obtaining passwords to hack into the company's database.
The pair passed the information on to four members of a right-wing extremist group, who were arrested in February for allegedly threatening to publicly release the data unless Softbank paid them 1 billion yen ($9.6 million) to 2 billion yen ($19.2 million), police said earlier. The four are on trial separately.
The Tokyo District Court sentenced Tomiyasu to a suspended 2 1/2-year prison term and five years of probation. Mori was given a two-year suspended term with four years of probation, said court spokesman Hideyuki Ito.
Judge Hideki Igeta criticized the defendants for causing "social anxiety" and of "base" motives, but said he decided to suspend their jail terms because, "their role was subordinate."
