A computer programmer who once volunteered for Perverted Justice, the producers of “To Catch a Predator,” was sentenced Friday to two years in prison for launching a botnet that attacked the organization’s web site.
According to court filings, Raisley once volunteered for Perverted Justice, the organization famous for working with the television show To Catch a Predator, which runs sting operations to catch pedophiles.
Raisley had a falling out with Perverted Justice’s founder, Xavier von Erck, and became an outspoken critic of the group. Van Erck decided to pull a sting on Raisley, so he posed as a woman named “Holly” on the Internet and convinced Raisley to leave his wife. A volunteer for Perverted Justice then took a picture of Raisley as he went to meet the woman (who didn’t exist) at the airport.
Embarrassed, Raisley decided to remove the articles from the web sites, so he wrote and launched the virus that spawned the botnet.
Raisley targeted several web sites, including those Rolling Stone, Radar, Nettica, Corrupted Justice, and the Rick Ross Institute of New Jersey. The U.S. Department of Justice said those sites suffered damages in excess of $100,000 in lost revenues and mitigation.
According to the criminal complaint, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched Raisley’s home, he told them that the virus was on a memory stick the agents found and admitted to writing it.
