From: InfoSec News (alertsinfosecnews.org)
Date: Tue Aug 11 2009 - 01:31:30 CDT

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http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/truckers/

By Kevin Poulsen
Threat Level
Wired.com
August 10, 2009

A Los Angeles hacker received a slightly reduced sentence Monday of 55
months in prison for participating in a multi-million computer fraud
scheme, after a federal judge took into account the man’s diagnosis with
Asperger’s Syndrome.

Viachelav Berkovich, 34, received five months less than the minimum
recommended by the probation office and prosecutors, and 23 months less
than the minimum under federal sentencing guidelines. His co-defendant,
Nicholas Lakes, 36, was sentenced last month to 70 months for
masterminding the scheme.

“The court tried to make a fair sentence … and gave us some of what we
asked for, and did accept that Mr. Berkovich suffered from Asperger’s,”
says Kiana Sloan-Hillier, Berkovich’s defense attorney. “But at the same
time felt that this was serious and that a substantial prison sentence
was called for to deter others.”

The sentence comes barely a week after British hacker Gary McKinnon lost
his High Court appeals to avoid extradition to the U.S., where he’s
accused of cracking nearly 100 Pentagon and NASA computers in 2001 and
2002, and allegedly causing $700,000 in damage. McKinnon’s lawyer, and
legions of UK supporters, have decried the extradition request as
inhumane because of McKinnon’s recent diagnosis with Asperger’s — a mild
form of autism that makes social interactions difficult, and sometimes
leads to obsessive, repetitive behavior.

[...]

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