Tech CEO sentenced to IP addressing scheme from blog The Technology blog and podcast

Tech CEO sentenced to IP addressing scheme

Arin, an agency that deals with IP addresses won in this case where someone baught a ton of IP addresses and used them for harm.

The first paragraph of this excellent story by our good friend Brian Krebs says:

Amir Golestan, the 40-year-old CEO of the Charleston, S.C. based technology company Micfo LLC, has been sentenced to five years in prison for wire fraud. Golestan’s sentencing comes nearly two years after he pleaded guilty to using an elaborate network of phony companies to secure more than 735,000 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), the nonprofit which oversees IP addresses assigned to entities in the U.S., Canada, and parts of the Caribbean.

Continuing:

In 2018, ARIN sued Golestan and Micfo, alleging they had obtained hundreds of thousands of IP addresses under false pretenses. ARIN and Micfo settled that dispute in arbitration, with Micfo returning most of the addresses that it hadn’t already sold.

Probably nobody has ever heard of this company, at least I haven’t, but here we go again with 5 years in some sort of fascility for crime.

Prosecutors showed that each of those shell companies involved the production of notarized affidavits in the names of people who didn’t exist. As a result, the government was able to charge Golestan with 20 counts of wire fraud — one for each payment made by the phony companies that bought the IP addresses from ARIN.

…

ARIN says the 5-year sentence handed down by the South Carolina judge “sends an important message of deterrence to other parties contemplating fraudulent schemes to obtain or transfer Internet resources.”

While the suspect declined to comment, he claims his innocence.

Golestan did not respond to a request for comment. But in a 2020 interview with KrebsOnSecurity, Golestan claimed that Micfo was at one point responsible for brokering roughly 40 percent of the IP addresses used by the world’s largest VPN providers. Throughout that conversation, Golestan maintained his innocence, even as he explained that the creation of the phony companies was necessary to prevent entities like Spamhaus from interfering with his business going forward.

The U.S Department of Justice says Golestan will serve 60 months in prison, followed by a 2-year term of court-ordered supervision. The Micfo CEO also was ordered to pay nearly $77,000 in restitution to ARIN for its work in assisting federal prosecutors.

Read more. The article is titled Tech CEO Sentenced to 5 Years in IP Address Scheme and as said, comes from Brian Kreb’s blog: Krebs on Security.

Have fun with this one!

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Informazioni sull'articolo

Tech CEO sentenced to IP addressing scheme was released on November 4, 2023 at 5:00 pm by tech in article commentary.
Last modified: November 4, 2023.

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Comments (2)

1. Comment by tech date 6 November 2023 alle 11:57 (),

   As I said, 5 years isn’t enough. We all know they have access to stuff these days. But I agree with you.

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2. Comment by crashmaster date 5 November 2023 alle 08:59 (),

   What?
   Seriously this is not the right punishment for this guy.
   5 years yes, but lets see.
   No net, no email, no phones, no voice line or smart mobile, no smart device access, no ai access, no credit card debit card or anything electronic.
   Eftpos probably because its magnetic, cash, text and calls on an really old phone, no data, no whats app, no social media, no net.
   Its doubtfull he will last the 5 years.
   Now for me being a pre borg, I at least know what it was like before I was assimilated.
   Sure I’d hate it to buggery but at least I would eventually survive.
   This guy did addresses, really no good at that level.
   Into the code mines with him.

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