NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: Lie Down With Dogs …
The Secret Service paid hacker Albert Gonzalez $75,000 to snitch on bank card thieves, unaware that he was engaged the largest identity theft crimes in U.S. history during his tenure as a paid government informant, reports Wired:
The information comes from one of Gonzalez’s best friends and convicted accomplices, Stephen Watt. Watt pleaded guilty last year to creating a sniffer program that Gonzalez used to siphon millions of credit and debit card numbers from the TJX corporate network while he was working undercover for the government. …
Gonzalez, 28, is set for sentencing this week on three indictments covering nearly every headline-making bank-card theft in recent years, including intrusions at TJX, Office Max, Hannaford Brothers, 7-Eleven and Heartland Payment Systems (which alone exposed magstripe data on 130 million credit and debit cards). The hacker’s plea agreements contemplate a total prison term of between 17 and 25 years. …
The Department of Justice publishes nonbinding guidelines that discuss the necessity of monitoring informants and assessing a criminal’s suitability to be one, but they don’t provide standards for doing so.
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