New Hampshire Man Sentenced to 82 Months After Reported Hacking Conspiracy

Asu Pala will not be enjoying the $8 million he reportedly collected by installing unwanted dial-up software on individual’s computers and then forcing them to call expensive premium telephone numbers as he was handed down a more than six-year jail sentence on Monday.

The New Hampshire man, 37, worked from 2003 to 2007, putting together a profitable business by setting up premium telephone numbers in Germany and then infecting German computers with software that would automatically dial the numbers for short periods of time, according to a Yahoo! News article.

"The victims were generally unaware that their computers' telephone modems were calling these numbers and charging them with expenses," the U.S. Department of Justice said in a press release.

Pala, a Turkish immigrant to the United States, operated his business out of Massachusetts and called his service provider Sakhmet. He was approached by men and was enticed into building the back-end infrastructure for dialer software that was then downloaded onto the German computers, his lawyer, Geoffrey Nathan, said in an interview Tuesday, according to the article.

Pala was apprehended after federal authorities found him paying cash for his second Lamborghini sports car. By May 2009, Pala started working with authorities to teach them how the Trojan downloader scam worked and how to catch the two men who had introduced him to the scam. Ultimately, Pala was not able to catch the men during his sting operation.

Due to his cooperation, Pala was given a break during sentencing of 82 months. Had the sting operation worked, it would have cut years more off his sentence, Nathan said.

"The case reflects the pitfalls and the success of a cooperation agreement," he said.

Meanwhile, the people who trained Pala are still running the scam, Nathan said.

 "Most regrettably, it turns out that the big fish got away with the crime and they remain in operation," he said.

Pala was ordered to forfeit $7.9 million and pay $2.2 million in back income taxes. Last April, he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and five counts of failure to file a United States income tax return.

Upon his release from prison, he must also get counseling for substance abuse, anger management, gambling, credit debt and other financial management problems.

Another telephone scam is hitting America right now, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reports. According to police, a telephone scam is being run from county jails in which inmates charge collect calls to unsuspecting consumers through call forwarding, according to Deputy Robert Boese.A person will receive a telephone call from a person claiming to work for a public safety agency or hospital. The caller will say that a relative of the recipient has been hurt in an accident or jailed, and then instruct him to call a phone number that starts with the prefix *72 for more information.