Wi-fi hacking neighbor from hell gets 18 year Prison Sentence

What happens when you upset your pedophile neighbor who works in some IT field?  You get IT based payback.  Forget a baseball bat to the knee.  Forget a kick to the groin.  These kinds of people want to hit where it hurts the most... your reputation.

Barry Ardolf, a Minnesota hacker, allegedly kissed his neighbors' son (on the lips) right in front of them.  To make the scenario a little more strange, Barry's kiss occurred within moments of meeting the little boy.  The parents, understandably upset, filed a police report against him.

Angered by the police report, Barry engaged in a sinister plan of silent warefare.  Barry first hacked into the neighbors' Wi-fi over the course of two weeks.  Once he was connected, he unleashed a barrage of illegal deeds with the intent of having his actions traced back to his unsuspecting neighbors.  And by "illegal deeds" I don't mean he downloaded the latest Miley Cyrus album... I mean he setup a Myspace account with several pitures of minors engaging in sexual activity.  He sent explicit love letters to his neighbors coworkers, almost getting his neighbor fired.  Finally, he sent threatening emails to government officials, which drew the attention of the Secret Service. 

Because of the cunning and sophistication of Ardolf's plan, the Secret Service tracked the IP of the emails back to Ardolf's neighbors' house.  Everything was moving according to Ardolf's plan.  However, there was one thing Ardolf did not count on- the lengths an innocent man is willing to go to clear his name.

With his jobs in shambles, his reputation ruined, and feds on his doorstep, the innocent neighbor did what any innocent man would do.  He denied everything.  He denied it to the point that he allowed his company to hire an outside hacker (on the good guys' side) to sift through all his home computer files and monitor his home network.  -This- is what saved this man. 

While monitoring his home network with a packet sniffer, the Hired Hacker found incriminating evidence of Ardolf, as well as unique identifiers that would isolate Ardolf from any other of the wireless network users. 

Once all this was found, the man was charged and sentenced to 18 years in prison... not long enough for such a sinister shuttin, if you ask me.


(*Note: I intentionally left out the neighbors' names.  I'm sure they are ready to move on and put this whole thing behind them.)

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/wifi-hacking-neighbor-from-hell-gets-18-years-in-prison.ars

Posted in: Crime