Albert Gonzalez, the convicted ring leader of the group of hackers that stole nearly 130 million credit card numbers from T.J. Maxx and other businesses, may be looking at 25 years in federal prison for his deeds.
If imposed, this sentence would be the longest ever for an identity theft case. Some interesting facts about this case are;
- Gonzalez has been linked to not only the TJX case but also hacks at Office Max, Dave and Busters, 7-Eleven, Heartland, BJ’s Wholesale, DSW, and Hannaford.
- He was going to use his money to buy a yacht and retire.
- It took him two years from the time that he hacked 11 million account from Office Max to decrypt and discover the PIN numbers.
- He was an information for the Secret Service during some of his crimes.
- He was almost hacked himself by outside consultants during the TJX hacking (reminds me of the Kevin Mitnick story).
- “Gonzalez argues that he should not be held responsible because TJX, and by extension each of eight other corporate victims described in the Indictment, had sufficiently vulnerable computer networks and data protection that he and his organization could break in and steal payment card numbers.”
Government Brief courtesy of Wired
Posted by
Mike Wright
