Crime & Safety
NullCrew Hacker Sentenced to Almost 4 Years in Jail for Corporate, Government Cyber-Attacks
Timothy French, 22, was accused of helping the group illegally access and steal customer info from a company's Naperville-based server.
CHICAGO, IL — A 22-year-old Tennessee man connected to the hacker group NullCrew was sentenced to almost four years in prison for his role in a string of cyber-attacks aimed at companies, colleges and even a state's computer network, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Timothy French, of Morristown, Tennessee, will a 45-month sentence in a federal prison. He pleaded guilty last year to intentionally damaging a protected computer without authorization. Originally, prosecutors were requesting a seven-year sentence for French, according to the Chicago Tribune.
"The defendant played a central role in an extensive, deliberate, and destructive hacking campaign that inflicted widespread and serious harm to businesses, governments, non-profits, and thousands of individuals,” Assistant U.S. Attorney William Ridgway wrote in a sentencing memorandum. "He disseminated online the usernames, email accounts, and passwords for thousands of individuals, which not only violated their privacy and sense of online security, it exposed them to financial fraud and identity theft."
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As a part of NullCrew, French illegally accessed computers used by individuals, private businesses and government agencies to steal confidential and encrypted data. Prosecutors accused French of being involved in at least seven cyber-attacks that cost his targets at least $792,000.
French's plea deal described how he and other members of NullCrew breached the Naperville-based computer server for Bell Canada and stole user names and passwords of more than 12,000 of the Canadian telecommunications company's customers, the Tribune reports.
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In handing down his sentence, U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman said he considerd the years of abuse French was a victim of, as well as his battle with alcohol, the Tribune reports. French apologized in court Tuesday and admitted to making bad choices in his life, the report added.
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