Jake Birchall, the last of the PayPal hackers, avoids prison time

Feb 2, 2013 09:37 GMT  ·  By

Jake Birchall, also known as FenniC, the last of the Anonymous hackers accused of launching distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against the systems of PayPal in 2010, has been sentenced to 60 hours of unpaid work, 18 months of youth rehabilitation and 18 months of supervised release.

The judge has argued that, despite the fact that the consequences of his actions are serious, he must hand out the sentence keeping in mind that he was under 18 when convicted, The Daily Mail informs.

“He did play a prominent and important part in this and I think he’s got to learn to get out of bed in the morning and go and do unpaid work,” Judge Peter Testar noted.

“Many would say that because you played a prominent role in this conspiracy which caused damage, nobody really knows quite how much damage it caused, and which potentially could have caused a lot more damage you ought to be serving a custodial sentence and a substantial one at that,” he added.

“But I have to sentence you on the basis that you were under 18 when convicted and therefore I’ve to sentence you as a young person.”

In January, Christopher Weatherhead (Nerdo), 22, and Ashley Rhodes (Nikon Elite), 28, were sentenced to 18, respectively 7 months in prison. A third co-defendant, Peter Gibson, avoided prison time because he had a smaller role in the attacks, which are said to have caused PayPal a loss of $5.5 million (4.3 million EUR).

After Weatherhead’s sentencing, Anonymous hackers came forward with a statement, accusing FenniC of being a snitch.

“FenniC – the snitch – of course, gets off without serving a filthy second of jail time – even though the snitch admitted to owning an IRC botnet. Last we checked, that IS an actual crime,” the hacktivists said at the time.