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Forum : Legal
| Posted: 02/09/2004 | Angry Phillies fan charged with hacking, e-mail attacks
| Original Source:
Author: Marc Schogol
A California man who’s an apparent white supremacist and disgruntled Philadelphia Phillies fan has been charged with spam e-mail attacks on the Phillies, Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News that flooded sports writers’ and editors’ accounts with tens of thousands of e-mails, federal authorities announced today.
Allan Eric Carlson, 39, was arrested by FBI agents today at his Glendale, Calif., home, according to Patrick L. Meehan, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Carlson is charged with 79 counts of computer-hacking related offenses and also with identity theft.
In 1996, Carlson, who California law enforcement officials believe placed anti-African Americans, anti-Jewish and anti-Latino leaflets into supermarket products, was sentenced to 32 months in prison for vandalizing more than two dozen luxury cars.
If convicted on the latest charges, Carlson faces a maximum sentence of 471 years imprisonment and $117,250,000 in fines.
Meehan’s office charges that from about November 2001 to December 2002, Carlson, “a disgruntled Phillies fan,” hacked into computers of unsuspecting users and from those computers launched spam e-mail attacks with long messages voicing his complaints about the Phillies management.
“The indictment charges that when launching the spam e-mails, Carlson’s list of addresses included numerous bad addresses. When those mails arrived at their destinations, the indictment charges that they were ‘returned’ or ‘bounced’ back to the person who purportedly sent them - the persons whose e-mail addresses had been ‘spoofed’ or hijacked. This caused a flood of e-mails into those accounts in a very short period of time.”
Many of the messages Carlson is accused of sending were obscene and scatological; one of tamer ones said “Corrupt Philly Mafia Keeps Phils in Cellar.”
Two “attacks” alone generated nearly 100,000 e-mails that bounced back to two newspaper sports department personnel.
Another inundated a columnist with about 60,000 “bounced” e-mails, requiring the closing of his e-mail account and the creation of a new one.
“Fans have the right to voice their displeasure, but these were electronic attacks with serious consequences,” Meehan said. “By flooding the victim computer systems with spam e-mails, those systems and the businesses they support were severely affected.
“You can boo, you can turn off the TV, but you can’t hijack the e-mail address of an unsuspecting user and call it passion.”
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