Deric Lostutter was charged Thursday under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the notorious anti-hacking statute that dates back to the 1980s.
The case stretches back several years, to 2012. After The New York Times published an account late that year of a horrific rape against a teenage girl in Steubenville, Ohio, an online vigilante campaign was started. Spearheaded by someone calling himself "KYAnonymous," the campaign targeted local officials whom the vigilantes felt weren't prosecuting the rape investigation seriously because the alleged perpetrators were high school football players.
In December 2012, a website devoted to Steubenville sports (warning: auto-playing sound!) was hacked. The hack displayed a video of a man in a Guy Fawkes mask. The masked man, whom Rolling Stone identified as Lostutter, threatened to release personal information of the implicated Steubenville football players unless they apologized to the rape victim by January 1, 2013.
Two teenage boys ended up being charged, and when the case went to trial in March 2013, the two were convicted of rape and sentenced to one to two years in prison.
In early June 2013, Lostutter outed himself as "KYAnonymous" and provided a written account of an April 2013 FBI search on his property in Winchester, Kentucky. The search marked the latest in a string of occasions where members of Anonymous and Anonymous-linked parties have been unmasked, pled guilty, or been otherwise caught for their actions online. Most recently, California journalist Matthew Keys was charged and convicted earlier this year under the CFAA of passing along a login in an Anonymous chatroom that eventually resulted in a Los Angeles Times article being defaced for 40 minutes. Keys was sentenced to 24 months in prison but has appealed both the conviction and the sentence.In previous media interviews, Lostutter has denied that he hacked the Stubenville sports site. According to his own account on ProjectKnightSec.com, Lostutter identified a man named "Noah McHugh" (also known as @justbatcat) as the actual hacker. The new federal indictment mentions @justbatcat as a co-conspirator but does not name him. That Twitter account has not been active in over three years.
In a Thursday evening tweet, Lostutter referred media inquiries to his attorney, Tor Ekeland, who also represented Keys.
You can talk to my attorney @TorEkelandPC please https://t.co/QvEwDjaI38
— Deric Lostutter (@DericLostutter) July 8, 2016
Ekeland did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It's also unclear why it took more than three years for Lostutter's indictment to be filed.
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