Data theft could be largest case ever

A man has been indicted in America for what could be the largest case ever of somebody stealing personal information from a company via the internet.

Scott Levine, 45, from Florida, has been accused of conspiracy, fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice by the Justice Department against Acxiom Corp., which is one of the biggest companies that manages personal, financial and coporate data.

It has been estimated that he allegedly stole about 8.2 gigabytes of data, which caused a loss of about US$7 million.

Levine works for Snipermail.com Inc., which is involved with distributing advertisement via the Internet on behalf of advertisers and brokers.

Acxiom, based in Arkansas, stores and processes a large amount of data on behalf of IBM, Microsoft and a many other credit card companies.

The FBI's regional computer forensics laboratory and the Secret Service were responsible for discovering the full extent of the attack by the cyber intruders.

Levine and other workers at Snipermail.com Inc. were accused of trying to hide their computers when the investigations were initiated.

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