Plea deal reached in email hacking

Passwords lifted for over 11 years

A Cedarville man pleaded guilty in Fort Smith federal court Monday to one count of computer hacking in connection with the unauthorized access of 5,921 email accounts.

Mark Anthony Townsend, 45, operated an online business called needapassword.com that solicited customers who wanted to get passwords to other people’s email accounts, according to a plea agreement.

The website, which is no longer active, included advertisements that read, “Is your spouse cheating with someone? Do you know who they are? You have the right to read the personal thoughts your spouse is writing to others,” according to an FBI affidavit filed Sept. 24 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.

From May 2002 through June, Townsend and others he recruited to work for the business made $356,235 with their password-hacking services, according to Monday’s plea agreement. The fees paid for hacking services typically ranged from $50 to $350, according to the affidavit.

Some of the illegal hacking was done from a computer at the Crawford County Courthouse in Van Buren, according to the affidavit. Townsend is an assistant chief at Crawford County Rural Fire Department No. 4.

He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of twice the financial gain resulting from the illegal hacking,or about $700,000, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Conner Eldridge. The activity falls under 18 U.S. Code, Section 1030, which pertains to computer fraud. Townsend will be sentenced at a later date.

“This case involves the repeated invasion of email accounts on a staggering scale,” Eldridge said Monday. “Law-abiding citizens should be protected against hackers who seek to steal their personal information. This defendant violated the privacy of thousands of individuals in order to enrich himself at the expense of others. He has now been held accountable, and we will continue to do all we can to investigate and prosecute those that seek to compromise the security of ordinary people.”

On Sept. 25, the day after the FBI affidavit was filed, a search warrant was executed on the Prairie Grove residence of Joshua Alan Tabor. Severalcomputers and other equipment were confiscated.

According to the affidavit, Tabor became involved in needapassword.com in 2010, and the two men opened a joint account at Arvest Bank that year. Computer crimes are investigated by the FBI’s Los Angeles office.

According to a document filed Jan. 22 in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. alleges Tabor and others gained unauthorized access to at least 250 email accounts. Tabor’s case has been transferred to U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.

Townsend and Tabor were previously employed by Apprentice Information Systems Inc. of Rogers, a company that provided information-technology services to county governments. Apprentice has been doing work for Crawford County since 2008.

According to the FBI affidavit, Townsend used CrawfordCounty government Internet services to conduct criminal activity.

“Townsend maintains a desk at the Crawford County courthouse, where he typically spends two days a week working,” according to the document. Two computers were on Townsend’s desk - one that belonged to Apprentice Information Systems and one that was owned by the Crawford County Rural Fire Department No. 4, according to the affidavit.

On April 12, 2013, FBI Special Agent Jonathan Holme sreviewed needapassword.com, and a confidential source became a client of the website that day.

On May 14, Special Agent Nathan Doherty submitted an affidavit for a search warrant in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles seeking more information about [email protected], the primary email address associated with needapassword.com. U.S. Magistrate Judge Jay Gandhi granted the search warrant.

On June 6 and July 24, FBI agents interviewed a woman who had hired needapassword.com to find out information about her boyfriend. She provided the FBI with two emails from [email protected] that instructed her to make a payment through the website PayPal and describe it as a “Donation to Mark Townsend.” On July 8, PayPal provided the FBI with records related to the account, which was registered to Mark Townsend.

Monday’s plea took place before U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III. Townsend was released on an unsecured $10,000 bond.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/15/2014

Upcoming Events