Gonzalez Agrees To Plead Guilty On All Counts, Surrender Almost $2.8 Million
Written by Evan SchumanAugust 30th, 2009
Albert Gonzalez, who the federal government has accused of breaking into the payment card databases of TJX, Hannaford, 7-Eleven, Target, J.C. Penney and a laundry list of other major retailers, has agreed to plead guilty to all of the charges against him from Boston and one count from New York, as StorefrontBacktalk reported on Thursday (Aug. 27). The plea agreement was filed on Friday (Aug. 28). His plea deal does not--at this time--include the New Jersey charges. The plea agreement was filed on Friday (Aug. 28).
In the Gonzalez plea bargain, the agreed-to sentencing recommendation—which calls for at least 15 years in prison and "no more than 25 years" in prison—does not seem much more lenient than he would have faced at trial. Even with as extensive a cyber attack as these, most U.S. courts wouldn't go anywhere near "more than 25 years" in cases where no one was physically hurt and the defendant wasn't accused of real violence or threatening violence. But a jury is a tricky animal and, technically, the counts he is pleading guilty to have a cumulative maximum sentence of 193 years in prison.
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Is there really an improvement between a mag swipe and contactless tap if multi-factor authentication is required?
-Ed
