14 DAY TRIAL // Onur Kopçak, a 26-year-old man, was sentenced this past Sunday, January, 10, to 135 years in prison, adding to a previous sentence of 199 years, bringing his total up to 334 years.
Kopçak was arrested in 2013 for running a phishing scheme that impersonated bank websites and tricked users into entering their financial details on his sites.
All was part of a big credit card fraud scheme through which Kopçak and 11 others were using the illegally-obtained financial details to carry out fraudulent operations.
Kopçak and 11 others ran a bank phishing site
Turkish law authorities charged Kopçak with identity fraud, access device fraud, website forgery and wire fraud, as Daily Sabah reports.
During the same year, following complaints from 43 bank customers, the hacker was sentenced to 199 years 7 months and 10 days in prison.
As the investigation continued, 11 other bank customers also filed complaints, which in turn triggered a new trial.
This trial concluded yesterday when the Mersin Third Criminal Court of General Jurisdiction added another 135 years to his original sentence.
Biggest sentence given to a suspect accused of cybercrime, by far
With a total of 334 years in prison, Kopçak is now atop of the list of the hackers with the biggest prison sentence, by far. In previous cases, rarely did a hacker get over 20 years in jail, this being the maximum to which sentences ever got. Most criminals accused of computer crimes received very short sentences, and sometimes only a few hours of community service.
This trend has changed in recent years when authorities decided to deter criminals from pursuing a career in cybercrime, but it never got to 100+ years prison sentences.
Last year, Ross Ulbricht received a life in prison sentence for his role in managing the Dark Net marketplace Silk Road, but his sentence included other non-cybercrime charges like money laundering and conspiracy to traffic narcotics.