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Levine Convicted in Acxiom Data Theft Case

By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.com

August 15, 2005
The man responsible for one of the largest personal data thefts in history has been found guilty of 120 counts of unauthorized access of data.

Scott Levine, 46, was also convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice and fraud by a jury in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Levine was indicted in July 2004 by Federal prosecutors on charges that he illegally accessed millions of data records containing personal information from Acxiom, one of the world's largest information aggregators.

Levine, then the head of Snipermail.com, an e-mail service designed to "spam" inboxes with announcements from its marketing clients, was a contracting partner of Acxiom, and exploited a security flaw in the company's network to gain access to its storehouse of data records.

Although Levine was not formally charged with identity theft, prosecutors stated that Levine used his access to steal 1.6 billion customer records, including names, addresses, dates of birth, and financial information. Levine's plan was to combine the data with Snipermail's list of clients and present the company to the Experian credit agency as a buyout target.

Levine's defense attorney attempted to portray him as not "computer-literate" enough to pull off the theft, but prosecutors utilized data found on Levine's personal laptop, as well as testimony from several Snipermail employees, to convince the jury he knew what he was doing.

Levine could face up to 640 years in prison and fines of over $30 million, but Federal sentencing guidelines will ensure his sentence is much lighter. Levine was scheduled for sentencing January 9th, 2006.

Acxiom has been in the headlines in recent years relating to its security procedures and usage of its collected data. In 2003, Daniel Baas was arrested for utilizing a stolen password to download millions of records from the Acxiom database.

Like Levine, Baas was an employee of a marketing company using Acxiom's records for its business.

Acxiom was also involved in JetBlue's release of customer data Transportation Security Administration as part of a test of its passenger screening system. Acxiom sold "personal demographics data," including passengers' places of residence and income levels, to defense contractor TorchConcepts in order to the data gathered from JetBlue.

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