Given the jail time, I am surprised he wasn't on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.
Well, you see, he's 40.
Tech CEO sentenced to 5 years in IP address scheme
11–20 of 311 posts
Re: Tech CEO sentenced to 5 years in IP address scheme
#12This highlights something tangential, but interesting nevertheless: Oftentimes getting embroiled in a civil lawsuit will, if impropriety is uncovered via the process of discovery, lead to separate criminal charges. The lesson here is that if you have something to hide, and it looks like you're going to be dragged into civil court (especially Federal civil court,) you should rush to settle or beg for arbitration behin…
Texan billionaire Robert Brockman sued an Australian for stealing $20 million from his trust in 2020 [1].
A few months later, he was indicted for hiding $2 billion of income from the IRS [2]. He died before trial took place anyway..
1- https://amp.smh.com.au/national/australian-barrister-denies-...
2- https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ceo-multibillion-dollar-softw...
Re: Tech CEO sentenced to 5 years in IP address scheme
#135 years in jail seems a bit of an overreaction.
That's in line with US sentencing guidelines[1][2][3]. Most of it came from the fact that the ip addresses were worth millions.
[1] https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2021-guidelines-manual/annot...
[2] https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2021-guidelines-manual/annot...
[3] https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2021-guidelines-manual/annot...
Re: Tech CEO sentenced to 5 years in IP address scheme
#14I know somebody who basically stole a class A IP network many years ago, in the very early days of IPV4. (He wouldn't tell me which one, but he had inside knowledge of how the system worked, and I know his background, so I believe him. ;)
The huge company that owned it went out of business, so he registered their domain name, and sent in an email to authorize the transfer.
Once you've got a hot class A network on your hands, but don't have 16,777,216 computers to use it, what can you possibly with it? How do you launder it?
It's not as if you can hide it in your garage, file the serial number off, repaint it, and put them all up for sale on the black market or ipBay individually!
Given that there are 24 bits for host identifiers, the total number of possible addresses in a Class A network is: 2^24 = 16,777,216
However, two addresses within that range are reserved: The "all zeros" host address is reserved as the network address, and the "all ones" host address is reserved as the broadcast address for the network. So count those out.
Therefore, the number of usable IP addresses in a Class A network is: 16,777,216 - 2 = 16,777,214
And at today's price of at least $15 a pop, 16,777,214 addresses × $15/address = $251,658,210
He ended up trading it under the table to a company that could use it, in exchange for the promise of free service for life.
Re: Tech CEO sentenced to 5 years in IP address scheme
#15"in a 2020 interview with KrebsOnSecurity, Golestan claimed that Micfo was at one point responsible for brokering roughly 40 percent of the IP addresses used by the world’s largest VPN providers. Throughout that conversation, Golestan maintained his innocence, even as he explained that the creation of the phony companies was necessary to prevent entities like Spamhaus from interfering with his business going forward."
He had to commit fraud, otherwise the business wouldn't work!
Re: Tech CEO sentenced to 5 years in IP address scheme
#16This highlights something tangential, but interesting nevertheless: Oftentimes getting embroiled in a civil lawsuit will, if impropriety is uncovered via the process of discovery, lead to separate criminal charges. The lesson here is that if you have something to hide, and it looks like you're going to be dragged into civil court (especially Federal civil court,) you should rush to settle or beg for arbitration behin…
> or beg for arbitration behind closed doors
Arbitration records aren’t protected from disclosure to law enforcement.
Re: Tech CEO sentenced to 5 years in IP address scheme
#17LOL I used to belong to "alternative asset" investor circles and saw that picture. They were looking for investors to buy/sell IPv4 addresses. Glad I noped out of that one
Re: Tech CEO sentenced to 5 years in IP address scheme
#18He pleaded guilty two years ago, why did sentencing take so long?
Re: Tech CEO sentenced to 5 years in IP address scheme
#195 years in jail seems a bit of an overreaction.
I guess you missed this part: > Prosecutors showed that each of those shell companies involved the production of notarized affidavits in the names of people who didn’t exist.
No I didn't. I'm wondering how putting someone that is arguably a smart entrepreneur behind jail for 5 year is going to better our society.
We need to think about the bigger picture and how this fits into rehabilitation.