14 DAY TRIAL // A former computer technician from Minnesota was sentenced to eighteen years in prison for hacking into his neighbour's wireless network and framing them for illegal acts.
Barry Ardolf, 46, who used to work as a computer technician at Medronic, launched a personal vendetta against his neighbours, the Kostolnik’s, after the couple reported him for kissing their 4-year-old son on the lips.
The harassment began in 2009 with Ardolf hacking into the family's wireless network and performing illegal activities in their names.
For example, he uploaded child abuse images on Matt Kostolnik's personal website and sent the same pictures to his work colleagues from his email account.
He also sent an email threatening to kill US Vice President Joe Biden and other politicians from the man's address which promoted a visit from the Secret Service at his office.
Kostolnik who worked as a lawyer, hired a law firm to investigate the incident. The firm brought in a computer forensics expert who installed a traffic sniffer on the network.
Logs from the sniffer contained Ardolf's Comcast account and suggested that he was behind the attacks. Additional evidence was gathered from the technician's computer after the FBI seized it.
Investigators claim this was not the Ardolf's first vendetta and that he also harassed his neighbours at a previous residence in Brooklyn Park.
Prosecutors initially offered Ardolf a two-year plea agreement but he turned it down. Then evidence began piling up and more charges got added to his case.
Last December, the wi-fi hacker pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated identity theft, one count of distribution of child pornography, one count of possession of child pornography, one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer, and one count of making threats to the President and successors to the presidency.
He was sentenced yesterday to 18 years in prison. "Barry Ardolf has demonstrated by his conduct that he is a dangerous man," Assistant United States Attorney Timothy Rank who prosecuted the case said in court documents. "When he became angry at his neighbors, he vented his anger in a bizarre and calculated campaign of terror against them," he added.