Hacker and thief reveals he worked for the gov
 

In Surprise Appeal, TJX Hacker Claims U.S. Authorized His Crimes

* By Kim Zetter Email Author
* April 7, 2011

Albert Gonzalez, the hacker who masterminded the largest credit card heists in U.S. history, is asking a federal judge to throw out his earlier guilty pleas and lift his record-breaking 20-year prison sentence, on allegations that the government authorized his years-long crime spree.

Gonzalez, 29, admitted last year that he and accomplices hacked into TJX, Office Max, Dave & Busters, Heartland Payment Systems and other companies to steal more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers, in what the government deemed the biggest computer crime case ever prosecuted in the United States. He’s currently serving time at the Milan low-security federal prison in southeastern Michigan, with a release date in the year 2025.

The government has acknowledged that Gonzalez was a key undercover Secret Service informant at the time of the breaches. Now, in a March 24 habeas corpus petition filed in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, Gonzalez asserts that the Secret Service authorized him to commit the crimes

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...ea-withdrawal/

Another patsy bites the dust.

130 millions of credit cards ... oh man ...

good for him

Once you reach like 10 million give up. Quite your job and live a nice life. Greedy bastards.

this is way way old news...

Story from last year in Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/...-time-20101111

Probably Secret Service wasn't paying him well. Who knows, perhaps he was doing the same job for the US govs but for a smaller scale and then he decided to take things in his own hands and do a little bit more for himself.

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Old news that he was a hacker. Not that he worked for the US gov doing the hacking. Which I'm quite sure this case is used as fuel to feed their cyber crackdown.. Once again a government patsy burned by his handlers to further a hidden agenda.

The article last year was all about him being an informant. Plus it was known before then as well. I have friends that know those guys irl.

Maybe it's just me but to me an informant would be informing the authorities of others doing wrong. Not doing the wrong for them.

Old story is/was he was an informant. Now it alleged he was doing the actual crime he is charged with for them. That's how a patsy gets used.

Take the underwear bomber. That lunatic (fact that he was mentally unstable) likely believed that he was doing good for the government as they (a US agent) lead him on the flight past the body scanners that were in place at that particular airport so he could scare the US people into allowing those same body scanners which had been bought and paid for years prior but couldn't sell the public on.

I read about this in Rolling Stone and the one comment I will say is that this guy is Brillant, he orchestrated one hell of a scheme with his crew, I am very impressed with the whole ordeal, not that I condone it.

Stephen Watts was the mastermind behind the whole sniffer packet. I guess hacking has one hell of a thrill to it no matter what it is, especially in a case like this.