"Iceman" hacker gets 13 years

A San Francisco man charged with hacking into financial institutions and then hawking the stolen data in an online forum has been sentenced to 13 years in a US federal prison.

Max Ray Butler, who uses the online alias "Iceman", was also ordered to pay US$27.5 million in restitution. He was sentenced last week in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.

The 37-year-old was indicted in 2007 on charges of wire fraud and transferring stolen identity information. Police tracked down Butler with the help of an informant from Pennsylvania who purchased more than 100 credit card records from him.

He pleaded guilty last June.

According to the complaint against Butler, he used wireless hijacking tactics to break into the databases of financial institutions and credit card processing centers from various hotel rooms.

He then sold the stolen information on his now-defunct online forum, CardersMarket, reportedly peddling some 1.8 million records that resulted in some US$86 million in fraudulent charges.

Butler was facing at least 30 years in prison but received a reduced sentence after cooperating with prosecutors. According to a report in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, his attorney argued that jailing Butler was a waste of resources and that he should use his expertise to help defend the nation against cyberterrorists.

Butler was previously released from jail in 2002 after serving an 18-month sentence for hacking into Pentagon computers, the report said.

See original article on scmagazineus.com