14 DAY TRIAL // Unsurprisingly, Hector Xavier Monsegur, better known as the hacker Sabu, wasn’t sentenced on April 2 as he should have been. Instead, the government has asked the judge to postpone the sentencing once again, this time until May 8, 2014. This is the sixth time that the sentencing is delayed.
“The Government respectfully submits this letter to respectfully request that the April 2, 2014 sentencing date be adjourned in order to allow the parties additional time to complete their sentencing submissions,” the request to Judge Loretta A. Preska reads.
“The parties understand that the Court is available for sentencing on May 8, 2014 at 2:00 p.m., and therefore respectfully request that the sentencing be set for that date and time. The defendant consents to the requested adjournment.”
It’s well known that Monsegur has been helping the government with cybercrime cases. The first case he worked on was the one against his own team, LulzSec. He’s also said to have helped the US government in hacking foreign governments.
Sabu was arrested in June 2011 and he has already pleaded guilty to 12 charges. However, prosecutors have kept delaying his sentencing. He should have been sentenced in August 2012, but the decision was postponed to February 2013, then to August 2013, then to October 2013, then to January 2014 and then to April 2014.
IBTimes makes an interesting point about these dates. The first two times, the government requested the delay of the sentencing by half a year, but the number of days requested by prosecutors has been decreasing, currently reaching 36 days.
Does this mean that the government is almost done with Monsegur? This could be the case, but it’s difficult to say for sure. After all, prosecutors could decide at the last moment that they need his help with another hacking case and delay the sentencing once again in May.
Jeremy Hammond, the hacker sentenced to 10 years in prison for hacking Stratfor, has provided some details regarding the way the government uses Sabu and suggests that they've been playing dirty.
“I had never even heard of Stratfor until Sabu brought it to my attention. Sabu was encouraging people to invade systems, and helping to strategize and facilitate attacks. He even provided me with vulnerabilities of targets passed on by other hackers, so it came as a great surprise when I learned that Sabu had been working with the FBI the entire time,” Hammond said just before being sentenced.