Ohio man sentenced for 2012 online hoax

A federal judge sentenced an Ohio man on Monday for carrying out an Internet hoax against Pitt in the spring of 2012.

Brett Hudson, 27, of Hillsboro, Ohio, received a sentence of three months in a halfway house followed by three months of house arrest and two years of probation. Hudson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit Internet extortion in October 2012. 

District Judge Joy Flowers Conti sentenced Hudson to half the time of his co-conspirator, Alexander Waterland, 25, of Loveland, Ohio, who was sentenced to a year and a day in prison followed by two years of supervised release in late May. 

Hudson received less time in confinement because he cooperated with police. Conti also said that based on Hudson’s background, his involvement with Waterland in the conspiracy was “inexplicable.”

“You seem to be a hard worker,” Conti told Hudson.

Conti noted that Hudson is employed full-time in Wilmington, Ohio, by a communications company and that he has two young children to support. Conti recommended that his first three months of confinement take place near his work, enabling him to request work release.

Conti also recognized Hudson’s financial situation and imposed a fine of only $100, due immediately.

The two men were convicted for sending threats over email and in a YouTube video in April and May of last year to publicize private information they claimed to have obtained from Pitt’s server. The two men, who worked together at the time, claimed they were members of the hacker group, Anonymous, and they demanded an apology from Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg for the alleged lapse in Internet security protecting Pitt faculty and students’ private information. 

Pitt officials previously told federal investigators that there was no evidence of records being stolen from the University’s servers at the time of the alleged security lapse and threats. 

Pitt spokesman John Fedele said in an email that the University confirmed that no private information was obtained by Waterland or Hudson.

“We believe that Judge Conti, after carefully considering the matter, made appropriate sentencing decisions following the co-defendants’ guilty pleas,” Fedele said.

Hudson and Waterland took no part in the dozens of bomb threats that harried Pitt’s students, faculty and administration in the spring of 2012. Adam Stuart Busby, of Dublin, faces charges for the bomb threats that the University received in the spring semester of the 2011-2012 school year. It is not clear when Busby will appear in court. He currently faces trial in Ireland on charges unrelated to the bomb threats. 

According to Conti, Hudson’s and Waterland’s extortion threats “fed into the [security] problem that was pre-existing” at Pitt at the time. 

Hudson was represented by his lawyer, Warner Mariani. Assistant U.S. Attorney James T. Kitchen prosecuted the case for the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

“The sentence should reflect the seriousness of the offense,” said Kitchen, who also reiterated Waterland’s sentence of a year and a day in prison and reminded the court that Hudson and Waterland played equal parts in the conspiracy. “[Their actions] should not be treated as a joke that went wrong.”