Wardriver pleads guilty in Lowes WiFi hacks
In a rare wireless hacking conviction, a Michigan man entered a guilty plea Friday in federal court in Charlotte, North Carolina for his role in a scheme to steal credit card numbers from the Lowe's chain of home improvement stores by taking advantage of an unsecured wi-fi network at a store in suburban Detroit.
Brian Salcedo, 21, faces an a unusually harsh 12 to 15 year prison term under federal sentencing guidelines, based largely on a stipulation that the potential losses in the scheme exceeded $2.5 million. But Salcedo has agreed to cooperate with the government in the prosecution of one or more other suspects, making him eligible for a sentence below the guideline range.
One of Salcedo's two codefendants, 20-year-old Adam Botbyl, is scheduled to plead guilty Monday, assistant U.S. attorney Matthew Martins confirmed. Botbyl faces 41 to 51 months in prison, but also has a cooperation deal with the prosecutors, according to court filings. The remaining defendant, 23-year-old Paul Timmins, is scheduled for arraignment on June 28th.
In 2000, as a juvenile, Salcedo was one of the first to be charged under Michigan's state computer crime law, for allegedly hacking a local ISP.
