Bringing closure to a case we’ve been following literally for years since it was first reported way back in June 2006, fraudster Edwin Pena was sentenced last Friday to 10 years in prison and ordered to repay the $1 million in restitution. It appears he also won’t be in the US after he serves his time:
In addition to his 120-month prison sentence, Pena was ordered to pay restitution of a little more than $1m. He will also be deported once he completes his time. Pena has already surrendered a large number of luxury items that were purchased using the ill-gotten profits, including a 40-foot motor boat and a 2004 BMW M3.
Back in February 2010, Pena pled guilty and provided some details into what he had done. This previous blog post provides links to additional parts of the story.
Nice to see this finally end…
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End? Really?
I wonder about this from the long-term perspective. Pena’s sentence include deportation to his home country of Venezuala — is it just me or does anyone wonder what he’ll get into once he’s back home in 10 years to a country with a long-term adversarial relationship with the US…if indeed he serves his full sentencing?
Forget the technical aspects, sure they’ll change, what Pena demonstrated was a mindset and aptitude for spotting weaknesses, and a business-sense for leveraging those weaknesses to his advantage on a wide scale. He’s just the kind of guy that will get pulled into nation-state offensive cyber activities.
My point is this. “Architects” of these kinds of attacks are a huge threat. As with Stuxnet, the coders and their skills are transient — the guys who whiteboarded and blueprinted Stuxnet are scary.
My 2 Pesos…
–scm