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August 25, 2008

A Brazilian resident who allegedly sold access to a large network of compromised personal computers has been arrested and charged with computer hacking offences in the United States.

According to an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in New Orleans, the 35-year old individual, Leni de Abreu Neto of Taubate, Brazil designed, maintained and leased access to a 100,000-strong illegal botnet network of compromised PCs that he subsequently attempted to sell.

If convicted, he faces up to 5 years in a federal prison as well as fines and restitution payments in excess of US $250,000.

Dutch police had been watching Neto closely for several weeks, and on July 29, acting on information from the FBI and Brazilian cybercops, proceeded to his arrest.

Neto is currently in detention in The Netherlands pending extradition proceedings.

The computer criminal allegedly conspired with 19-year old Netherlands resident Nordin Nasiri to sell access to a network of compromised PCs and supply botnet code to a third party for around US $37,000.

These compromised PCs provided an efficient platform to largely distribute hundreds of thousands of spam e-mail messages or to launch distributed DoS (denial of service) attacks.

At the same time, Neto's alleged co-conspirator Nasiri is being prosecuted by Dutch authorities, and could also face from three to five years in jail if convicted.

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Source: eBusiness News.

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