Spammer found guilty of stealing 1.6bn customer records

16 Aug 2005

Email marketer Scott Levine has been found guilty of stealing 1.6bn customer data records from Acxiom in what has been dubbed the biggest case of data theft to date.

Levine, who was behind Snipermail.com, was found guilty on 120 counts of unauthorised access to data, two counts of access device fraud and one count of obstruction of justice.

Levine faced testimony from six former Snipermail staff who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and testified against him. He could possibly face years in prison and a $31m fine. He will be sentenced on January 9.

Among the data stolen were names, email and postal addresses although the data was not used for the purposes of identity theft.

US Attorney Bud Cummins said: "We're very pleased with the outcome. These are very serious crimes, a huge amount of data that was stolen for monetary gain and he should be held accountable."

The case, which was heard in Little Rock Arkansas, where Acxiom is based, heard that during a 16-month period to August 2003, Levine exploited security weakness in Acxiom's system to steal the files.

Levine wanted to use the data to increase the value of his Snipermail.com bulk Email company, which has since gone out of business.

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