Peer-to-peer identity thief sentenced to 51 months

Gregory Kopiloff, 35, also must serve three years of supervised release after admitting to charges of mail fraud, accessing a protected computer without authorisation and aggravated identity theft, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.

Kopiloff, who was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle, had been accused of using LimeWire, Soulseek and other peer-to-peer (P2P) applications to steal personal and financial information from victims' PCs, authorities said.

He used these P2P programs to search the computers of other people in the file-sharing network to locate income tax returns, student financial aid applications and credit reports.

According to the indictment against Kopiloff, he bought more than US$73,000 in products while defrauding more than 83 victims, from March 2005 to August 2006.

Authorities believe this is the first time someone has been charged with using p2p as a means for ID theft.

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