Friday, August 12, 2005

'Special skills' hurt credit card thief

Declan McCullagh writes the C|Net News "Police Blotter":

A quick investigation revealed that the credit card numbers had been reported as lost or stolen, and Prochner confessed to obtaining them from the Internet. In a written statement, he described altering Web sites' cgi-bin addresses in a way that let him view order logs with credit card numbers.

After his confession, Prochner seemed to realize he had little chance in court. He plead guilty in July 2003 to violating a federal law prohibiting the possession of 15 or more credit card numbers with intent to defraud. He was sentenced to a 25-month prison term and three years of supervised release.

His attorney appealed, saying the sentence, which included $2,610.19 of restitution, was too harsh. Prochner also challenged a requirement barring him from working with children while on supervised release--a condition imposed because entries in his journal talked about wanting to have sex with boys and, in the court's words, indicated that he "may have" done so.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected all of his arguments.

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