White Collar Crime News

FBI raids home of “fashion-obsessed” community college student/hacker December 21, 2010

Ross Ulrich, a 22-year-old “fashion-obsessed” community college student from Ohio had his home raided by the FBI after he downloaded more than 1,100 files from a Condé Nast server last summer.  He told the Smoking Gun that federal agents executed a search warrant at his parents’ Columbus home earlier this year, but have yet to charge him with a crime.  There is no word on whether he has an attorney yet.  If he does, he is probably not listening to his/her advice as he is clearly talking to the press.

Ulrich said that he downloaded the images so he could be the first to post them online. He said he did not pay for access to the sites. Condé Nast filed a copyright lawsuit against the user of an IP address that was eventually tied to him .  He eventually agreed to pay Condé Nast $12,500 to settle the copyright claim.  He also admitted to accessing a Warner Bros. server holding images and clips from a variety of movies in production.  Warner Bros. filed a similar, federal lawsuit last year citing the same IP address, though Ulrich said he believes that they had decided not to further pursue its civil action, which sounds like an odd statement.  Either the suit is active or its not. 

Sounds like a really strange computer hacking case where he really didn’t have any sinister motivation.  Just kind of an odd guy.  Kinda hard to get a jury to get worked up over that so criminal charges may never be filed.

Story is here.

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