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Wi-Fi hopper guilty of cyber-extortion
Monday, 28 June 2004 13:33 ESTA Maryland man with a grudge against a Connecticut-based patent firm used unsecured wireless networks at homes and businesses in the Washington DC area to penetrate the company's computers and deliver untraceable threats and extortion demands, until an FBI surveillance team caught him in the act. Myron Tereshchuk, 42, pleaded guilty this month to a single charge of "attempted extortion affecting commerce" for demanding a $17m ransom in exchange for not broadcasting proprietary information he obtained from MicroPatent, LLC, an intellectual property firm that packages patent and trademark information for law firms.
Tereshchuk ran a small, competing patent document service that ran into trouble when he was allegedly caught removing files from US Patent and Trademark Office, and was temporarily banned from the facility. Tereshchuk believed he was the victim of corruption at the patent office, and blamed MicroPatent, according to court records. He began penetrating the company's computers, going through its trash, and pseudonymously sending harassing e-mails to its customers and president.
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