http://www.ardemgaz.com/ShowStoryTemplate.asp?Path=ArDemocrat/2005/06/28&ID=Ar02306&Section=Business BY BRIAN BASKIN ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE June 28, 2005 U.S. attorneys want to drop six of 144 charges against Florida spammer Scott Levine, two weeks before he stands trial on charges that he orchestrated a massive data theft from Little Rock's Acxiom Corp. The six charges relate to instances where Levine is accused of gaining access to an Acxiom server without downloading any data, according to a Friday filing in the U.S. District Court for Arkansas' Eastern District. "It's a tenuous theory to push that the crime was committed on those files," said U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins, who described the changes as routine before a trial. On July 11 in Little Rock, Levine will still face 133 counts of unauthorized access of a protected computer. Each catalogues a separate time between April 2002 and August 2003 when he reportedly downloaded information about consumers from Acxiom. The Boca Raton owner of the defunct bulk e-mail operation Snipermail.com Inc. also is being tried for conspiracy, money laundering, two counts of unauthorized possession of Acxiom passwords and obstruction of justice. U.S. attorneys also amended the indictment to ask that Levine forfeit a Boca Raton home he bought after selling a home named in the July indictment. Other homes near the property Levine owns sold recently for between $1.1 million and $2 million, according to real estate records. "He sold [the first] house out from under us before we got our claws into it," Cummins said. At Levine's July 2004 indictment, a U.S. attorney said the breach "may be the largest intrusion of personal data ever." None of the stolen information was used for identity theft. Instead, Levine is supposed to have integrated the stolen data into Snipermail databases and sold them to clients, according to the indictment. Levine may have hacked into Acxiom servers as early as November 2001 but was only made known in August 2003 when the company checked its servers in response to another hacking incident. Daniel Baas, an employee of an Acxiom partner in Ohio, stole millions of records between Dec. 10, 2002, and Jan. 2, 2003, but never used any of the data. He was sentenced in state 1 court in Ohio to 2 /2 years in prison in October. In March, he was sentenced to 45 months in federal prison by the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati. Acxiom collects and analyzes data about virtually all U.S. households. It sells consumer information for marketing purposes and assists clients with data processing. _________________________________________ Attend the Black Hat Briefings and Training, Las Vegas July 23-28 - 2,000+ international security experts, 10 tracks, no vendor pitches. www.blackhat.com
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