FRAUD/HACKING NEWS

Houston businessman sentenced for cheating NASA

R alph Montijo has been convicted of cheating the US National Space

and Aeronautics Administration over 12 years out of what the US Justice Department described as "tens of millions". Montijo was sentenced to two years in jail and a subsequent three years of supervised probation.

He was ordered, along with two companies that he controlled, to pay the US Governmen t almost $12 million. To end an investigation that had begun in 1992, Montijo pleaded

gui l ty to 180 counts of money laundering, mail fraud, theft from programmes that were financed by the US Government, and obstructing a US G o v e r n m e n t audi t . The companies controlled by Montijo had provided the Johnson Space Center, both directly and as a Rockwell Space Operations subcontractor with tens of millions of dollars of library, security, graphics arts, and design services.

The US Government had recovered $1 million in admitted overbillings,

but payment of the remaining was reported to be doubtful. Montijo was alleged to have conducted at least 40 separate fraud schemes and had billed the Johnson Center for his town house expences, foreign vacations, his w i f e ' s s a l a ry , and the cos t of operating buildings used in other business ventures, including Papa Primo pizza delivery franchises that he operated in Texas and Arizona.

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Computer hacker threatens Boston newspaper and Internet service provider

U 4ea (the name style used by that i n d i v i d u a l ) , a s e l f - s t y l e d

computer hacker, has been reported to have threatened the survival of the Boston Herald, a loca l da i ly newspaper ; the Berksh i reNet , a Pit tsfield Massachuset ts Internet access provider; and unidentified Boston area computer networks. The incident, which reportedly, stems from a November 1995 attempt by Jason Hatch, the Berskhire system adminis t ra tor to stop u4ea from s e n d i n g out r e p o r t e d l y rac i s t

messages, which included swastikas, w o r l d w i d e u n d e r the s e rv i ce provider' s name.

The Boston Herald became involved when it reported on alleged efforts by the hacker to intimidate both Hatch and B e r k s h i r e N e t , wh ich was shutdown by u4ea for some 12 hours at one point, u4ea, who apparently operates from a Canadian site, has been reported by Hatch to have entered the BerkshireNet system, masqueraded as Hatch, erased the

memory of two of its three computers, and to have put white supremacist materials on its system. The computer hacker is claimed to have threatened both the welfare of Hatch's family and to e n g a g e in what was t e rmed 'electronic terrorism' to cripple other unspecified computer networks in the Boston area. According to the Boston Herald account, the US FBI had d e c l i n e d to c o m m e n t on its investigation into the incident.

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Computer Fraud & Security April 1996 © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd