Wi-fi hopper guilty of cyber-extortion

Found on The Register on Saturday, 26 June 2004
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Myron Tereshchuk, 42, pleaded guilty this month to a single charge of "attempted extortion affecting commerce" for demanding a $17m ransom in exchange for not broadcasting proprietary information he obtained from MicroPatent, LLC, an intellectual property firm that packages patent and trademark information for law firms.

Tereshchuk ran a small, competing patent document service that ran into trouble when he was allegedly caught removing files from U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and was temporarily banned from the facility. Tereshchuk believed he was the victim of corruption at the patent office, and blamed MicroPatent, according to court records. He began penetrating the company's computers, going through its trash, and pseudonymously sending harassing e-mails to its customers and president.

Though he went to some lengths to make himself untraceable technically, past altercations between Tereshchuk and the company made him the prime suspect from the start, according to court records. The clearest sign came when he issued the $17m extortion demand, and instructed the company to "make the check payable to Myron Tereshchuk."

All these efforts to hide his tracks and leave not a single trace; and then he tells them who to make the check payable to. I cannot believe the thought that nobody would notice and assume some benevolent unknown person did it instead.