14 DAY TRIAL // 27-year-old James Jeffery, the Anonymous hacker known as Pablo Escobar, the one responsible for breaching and defacing the official site of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), has been sentenced to 32 months in prison.
Jeffrey was apprehended by law enforcement representatives hours after he breached BPAS.
According to The Guardian, the hacker, who pleaded guilty to the crimes he committed, also told investigators that he managed to find security holes in other major websites, such as the ones of the CIA, FBI, US Navy and several other law enforcement agency sites.
“You stole the records of approximately 10,000 women. Many of them were vulnerable women, vulnerable simply because they had had a termination or because of their youth or because their family did not know about their situation,” Judge Michael Gledhill QC said before handing out the sentence.
“You were proud about what you had done - you boasted about it on Twitter. In my view, it is significant that the online name you used on Twitter was that of notorious criminal Pablo Escobar.”
Jeffrey’s lawyer, Shaun Wallace, tried to play a card that’s played by the defenders of many hackers. He said that the site was breached out of curiosity, which ultimately made him become less responsible.
Wallace also told the court that his client didn’t make up the text he posted on the site when he defaced it, instead he copied it “from Google.”
“The sentence that I impose is both to punish you for what you have done and to send out a clear message of deterrence to anyone tempted to commit similar hacking offences,” the judge concluded.
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