14 DAY TRIAL // Notorious hacker Guccifer who is responsible for accessing repeatedly and without authorization several email accounts belonging to Romanian public figures, such as politician Corina Cretu, accused of having an affair with former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, and George Maior, the chief of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), has been sentenced to seven years in prison.
The court convicted Marcel Lazar Lehel to three years in prison for each account hacked, the local court house revealed, also mentioning that the two sentences have been merged together. Since he had already been sentenced to three years on probation in a similar case back in 2012, the leftover year has been added to the current punishment.
This means that Lehel will be spending a total of four years in lock-up. The decision isn’t final, however, so it can still be contested in the Court of Appeal.
The hacker admitted, during his last appearance in court, that he hacked the email accounts of MEP Corina Cretu and SRI head George Maior, as well as those belonging to several entertainers. However, he tried to downplay the importance of the incident, saying that while the Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) is calling him a threat to national security, everybody got their email account hacked at one point or another.
Romanian authorities cooperated with US authorities on the case. Guccifer’s list of victims includes more than local singers and public figures. Members of the Bush family, actor Steve Martin, George Roche, members of the Council on Foreign Relations, former Air Force Secretary, as well as members of the British House of Lords.