Being a wireless enthusiast, thought you’d wanna see this.
Wireless network hijacker found guilty £500 fine and 12 months conditional discharge…
By Dan Ilett
Published: Friday 22 July 2005
http://management.silicon.com/government/0,39024677,39150672,00.htm
A UK man has been fined £500 and sentenced to 12 months’ conditional discharge for hijacking a wireless broadband connection.
On Wednesday, a jury at Isleworth court in London found Gregory Straszkiewicz, 24, guilty of dishonestly obtaining an electronic communications service and possessing equipment for fraudulent use of a communications service.
Straszkiewicz was prosecuted under sections 125 and 126 of the Communications Act 2003.
Police sources said Straszkiewicz was caught standing outside a building in a residential area holding a wireless-enabled laptop. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that Straszkiewicz was ‘piggybacking’ the wireless network that householders were using. He was reported to have attempted this several times before police arrested him.
The case is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK.
Last year, 21-year-old Brian Salcedo was sentenced to nine years in a US prison for siphoning credit card numbers over a wireless network from hardware store Lowes.
previously, I’d found this
Man charged for stealing Wi-Fi signal
Man charged for stealing Wi-Fi signal
By Jack Schofield / Internet 09:48pm, Thursday July 7 2005
“Police have arrested a man for using someone else’s wireless Internet network in one of the first criminal cases involving this fairly common practice,” reports AP.
Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pretrial hearing this month following his April arrest on charges of unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony.
Police say Smith admitted using the Wi-Fi signal from the home of Richard Dinon, who had noticed Smith sitting in an SUV outside Dinon’s house using a laptop computer.
