Romania eBay hacker gets suspended sentence
A Romanian court on Wednesday handed a three-year suspended sentence to a hacker accused of causing auction website eBay millions of dollars in losses by illegally accessing its email accounts.
"The Bucharest appeal court rejected both the prosecutors' and the defendant's appeals," spokesman Daniel Gradinaru told AFP.
Vlad Duiculescu, 23, was arrested in April 2008 on the suspicion of "fraudulently and repeatedly" accessing eBay's accounts from 2005-2007, causing the company losses estimated at two million dollars, according to prosecutors.
The hacker known as "Vladuz" was arrested during an operation conducted jointly with the US Secret Service and the FBI.
The company at the time publicly thanked the Romanian police "for successfully arresting cyber-criminal Vladuz, who had attempted to defraud eBay users."
The hacker spent nearly two years in prison awaiting trial, before being released in January 2010.
Several cyber-crime networks operating from Romania have been dismantled in the last few years, often with the help of US experts.
(c) 2011 AFP