A court in the southern Dutch city of Breda has finally reached its verdict in a cybercrime case. A gang was originally accused of creating several pieces of malware in order to establish a 1.5-million-strong botnet. The prosecution demanded for each of the two men to receive a maximum three-year prison sentence, but the judge in the case decided to sentence the leader of the group to two years and the accomplice to 18 months. In both cases a part of the sentence has been set as probationary (8 months for the leader and 6 months for the accomplice), meaning that the two men will not have to spend any more time in jail, as they have already served the required time awaiting the trial.
The biggest case of such nature to be heard in the Netherlands was started in 2005, when both perpetrators were detained at their homes in police raids. They were accused of writing a worm known as “Toxbot” and running a large botnet, as well as having connections with the Russian Internet mafia. Both men were involved in stealing money from Internet users and also engaged in cyberblackmail activity using their network to threaten businesses with DoS attacks.
In addition to their prison sentence the 20-year-old leader of the group, who was just a teenager at the time of the cyberattacks, will have to pay a fine of 9,000 Euros. He will also have to pay-up almost 17,000 Euros of his illegally obtained profits. His 28-year-old accomplice has been fined a total of 4,000 Euros and will also have to return 2,500 Euros. The Dutch prosecution has been on record as to say they are “not unhappy with the ruling in this case”.
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