Florida man charged in huge database break-in

Scott Levine of Boca Raton was indicted on charges of conspiracy, unauthorized access of a protected computer, access device fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

Levin, who ran an email marketing company called Snipermail, along with other Snipermail employees, allegedly broke into a computer database owned by Acxiom, which processes customer data for its clients.

The indictment charges 139 counts of illegal access, representing about 8.2 gigabytes of data that was downloaded from the Acxiom server between April 2002 and August 2003, according to the DOJ. Federal officials said the case may be the largest computer break-in involving personal data to date.

There is no evidence that the stolen data was misued, officials said.

www.usdoj.gov