Britain’s The Register did some crack reporting on University of Pennsylvania student Ryan Goldstein, who was sentenced 3 months in a guilty plea for running multiple botnets to attack his online enemies with Denial of Service attacks. That’s not too unusual, except for the fact that Ryan Goldstein repeatedly exposed himself to little boys on webcams, and had over 1,000 photos of kiddie porn on his computer. The IRC channel admins who were the target of Ryan’s DDoS attacks (because they banned him for lewd and inappropriate behavior) went so far as to hack into multiple UPenn networks to gather Ryan’s emails, emails of UPenn Administrators colluding with the FBI, print out photos and contact info with accusations of pedophilia on UPenn networked servers, and so on. Wow. Good job guys, it seems like UPenn doesn’t know how to config a router to save its life.
But you’d think that someone busted for hacking, spamming, exposing himself to minors, and downloading child porn all on his UPenn school network would be tried for all of those charges. But no. (More Register coverage here)
Instead, the Judge was so miffed at the sentencing options that he had a joint hearing so that Ryan was tried alongside convicted child pornographer Derrick Williams–who is African American. Ryan faced a maximum sentence of 5 years and $250,000 fine, but received only 3 months and a $30,000 fine. But that’s generally what happens when white prep boys (’05 Germantown Academy grad!) get busted. Williams received 2 years.
“The prosecution failed to bring any charges regarding the more than 1,000 child pornography images found on his computer. They then agreed that he could schedule the 90 days at his convenience, so as not to conflict with his class schedule. He’ll probably serve them during summer vacation.
I’m not sure what kind of school wants to have a convicted computer criminal and child pornography collector as one of their students. I guess he’ll get his degree and go find a job, after his brief visit to jail. “
But don’t take our word for it–even USA Today noted the disparity.
“Both men were found with several thousand images of child pornography, and each had copied some of the images, though Williams had also posted about 15 of them on a Web site, prosecutors said.
The judge said he could not help noting that Williams is black and Goldstein is white.
“This has weighed very heavily on my mind, as I think it would most judges,” U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson said. “That’s why I’ve brought this case together with the Williams case.”
However, he said the sentencing disparities were not connected to race. Baylson gave Williams a two-year prison term, noting his steady work history and minor criminal record.”
You see, the Feds set up a deal that prevented the judge from trying the case effectively. According to The Register, “In exchange for Goldstein’s help prosecuting seven cases involving botnets, federal prosecutors agreed to charge him with a single misdemeanor hacking charge for damage he inflicted on a University of Pennsylvania server.” So you give the spammer hacker a big break (ignoring child porn charges?!) for outing other spammy hackers? Interesting.
Ryan’s Google profile is available here, which also has a nice pic and a link to his company ChronoWake, which develops “a product that helps people wake up feeling more refreshed and energized.” Wow yeah I guess if I were a pedophilac spammer I would need that product too. Way to look out for your people, Ryan, I think you have that target market covered. Here’s his “business profile” with date of birth and ludicrous claims that he was contracted by the Department of Defense, Homeland Security and NASA.
You can find his contact info (address, phone numbers, emails) in a forum thread here.
Also of interest is that UPenn’s “Office of Information Security” got photos and emails of Ryan yanked from servers with the following letter:
“Hi,
I work for the Office of Information Security for the University of Pennsylvania. Someone has posted a file as well as private information from emails to your forum and we would like to ask you if you would kindly take it down.
http://www.opensc.ws/showthread.php?p=13632
The file “Digerati Exposed” contains personal email that should not be hosted on a public website. It is likely that everyone who has an interest in this file has already downloaded it so leaving it public is of no advantage.
Thanks for your consideration.
- –
xxxxx
University of Pennsylvania
Office of Information Security
xxxx“
Yes, UPenn, thanks for your consideration of the fact that you aided the government to get one of your pedophile students free on easily prosecutable charges. Thanks also for allowing him to remain in school and get a degree. That’s the kind of morality we’ve come to expect from the University of Pennsylvania.
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