14 DAY TRIAL // Naveed Ahmed, aka Nav aka semaph0re, 27, of Tampa, Florida, was sentenced Thursday, January 28, 2016, to two years probation for his involvement in a massive spam campaign organized through the Darkode forum.
In the summer of 2015, the US and European authorities coordinated searches across 21 countries that resulted in 28 arrests and 37 house searches. Authorities were specifically targeting the users of an infamous underground hacking forum called Darkode, where hackers were advertising their services and selling stolen data.
The FBI charged twelve people last July for their involvement in criminal activities via the Darkode forum, and a few of them immediately pleaded guilty, in hopes of a reduced sentence.
One of them is Mr. Ahmed, who pleaded guilty in August, after the FBI charged him of conspiring to send spam, along two other accomplices, Phillip R. Fleitz, aka Strife, 31, of Indianapolis, and Dewayne Watts, aka m3t4lh34d aka metal, 28, of Hernando, Florida.
The FBI said the three were maintaining a fully-functional spam botnet using servers located in China that exploited vulnerable routers in third-world countries and sent out millions of spam messages.
Spammers made up to $3,000 a week
The three operated their botnet from September 2011 to February 2013, and made around $3,000 / €2.700 per week.
According to local Pittsburgh news site WTAE, Pittsburgh Senior U.S. District Judge Maurice Cohill Jr. gave the hacker to a sentence of two years probation.
Last week in Florida, Watts, the first of Ahmed's accomplices got a similar sentence, but he had to spend the first six months under house arrest.
Fleitz, the third man involved in this scheme, will be sentenced on Monday, February 1, 2016, in an Indianapolis court.
As for the Darkode website, the forum made a comeback two times, one last summer, and one this past December, but both failed to attract the same number of followers as the original forum did before authorities arrested a big chunk of its userbase.