Five Years in Jail under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act

From All Headline News, a story concerning a 57 month sentence meted out to computer hacker Jeanson Ancheta by federal judge Gary Klausner in the Central District of California. Ancheta admitted downloading software onto more than 400,000 computers, creating a collection of "zombie bots" which sent out millions of unwanted spam emails. Ancheta also admitted collecting $107,000 in commissions and charging spammers to use his "botnet" by selling access to up to 10,000 infected machines at a time.

According to the report, "In pleading guilty [Ancheta] agreed to pay about $15,000 in restitution to the US government. In addition, he agreed to forfeit his proceeds from the crimes, which include more than $60,000 in cash, a 1993 BMW and computer equipment."

57 months is one of the longer sentences under the CFAA (and no doubt well deserved in this case).