Nightmare On ... the Internet Highway.

Remember: Things Aren't Always What They Seem:

A Minnesota hacker prosecutors described as a “depraved criminal” was handed an 18-year prison term Tuesday for unleashing a vendetta of cyberterror that turned his neighbors’ lives into a living nightmare.

Barry Ardolf, 46, repeatedly hacked into his next-door neighbors’ Wi-Fi network in 2009, and used it to try and frame them for child pornography, sexual harassment, various kinds of professional misconduct and to send threatening e-mail to politicians, including Vice President Joe Biden.
...
He then e-mailed the same child porn to one of the husband’s co-workers, and sent flirtatious e-mail to women in Mr. Kostolnik’s office. “You are such a fox,” read one of the e-mails. He sent the message’s through the husband’s genuine e-mail account.

After the husband explained to his law office superiors that he had no idea what was happening, his bosses hired a law firm that examined his network and discovered that an “unknown” device had access to it. With Kostolnik’s permission, they installed a packet sniffer on his network to try and get to the bottom of the incidents.

Then, in May 2009, the Secret Service showed up at Kostolnik’s office to ask about several threatening e-mails sent from his Yahoo account, and traced to his IP address, that were addressed to Biden and other politicians. The subject line of one e-mail read: “This is a terrorist threat! Take this seriously.”

“I swear to God I’m going to kill you!,” part of the message to Biden said.

A forensics computer investigator working for Kostolnik’s law firm examined the packet logs, and found the e-mail sessions sending the threats. In the data surrounding the threatening traffic, they found traffic containing Ardolf’s name and Comcast account.

The FBI got a search warrant for Ardolf’s house and computer, and found reams of evidence, including copies of data swiped from the Kostolniks’ computer, and hacking manuals with titles such as Cracking WEP Using Backtrack: A Beginner’s Guide; Tutorial: Simple WEP Crack Aircracking and Cracking WEP with BackTrack 3 — Step-by-Step instructions. They also found handwritten notes laying out Ardolf’s revenge plans, and a cache of postal mail that Ardolf had apparently stolen from the Kostolniks’ mailbox and stashed under his bed.

“One of the manuals had Ardolf’s handwriting on it and another had the unique identifying ID for the Kostolniks’ router typed into it,” Rank, the prosector, wrote.

Also discovered in Ardolf’s possession was the pornographic image posted on MySpace and sent to the husband’s co-worker, and evidence that he’d secretly staged a similar harassment campaign against a neighbor at Ardolf’s previous home in Brooklyn Park, another Minneapolis suburb. Among other things, he sent that family a postal-mail message consisting of a one-page, color print-out of the family’s “TurboTax” return with personally identifying information, in addition to several skull images.

“I told you about a year ago that you should be very afraid. I can destroy you at will, you sorry-ass excuse for a human,” the letter said.

The Brooklyn Park family told the FBI they believed Ardolf was upset that their personal care attendants, who looked after their two disabled twin daughters, parked their car in front of his house.

ADDED: Pioneer Press account:

...
Ardolf, 46, then a technician at Medtronic, was a "certified ethical hacker," according to the bumper stickler above his bed, who used his skills to hack into the Kostolnik's wireless router. He then opened email accounts in Kostolnik's name to send lewd and threatening messages to several people in the Kostolniks' lives.

Some emails threatened the vice president and other elected officials, while other messages, to Kostolnik's co-workers and bosses at the downtown Minneapolis law firm where he worked as a lawyer, included child pornography.
...
Ardolf was charged in June 2010, agreed to a plea deal, rejected it, was indicted on more charges, went to trial and then halted the trial after a couple of days to plead guilty.

Then, on the eve of his sentencing in March, he told Frank he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea and get a "do-over" trial. The judge rejected his arguments, setting the stage for Tuesday's proceedings.

Ardolf's sentencing took longer than normal. Sentencings in federal court are generally brisk affairs; the longer ones last perhaps an hour. Including a couple of short breaks, Ardolf's sentencing stretched on for 6-1/2 hours.

It was filled with lawyers' arguments, testimony from an FBI agent, the Kostolniks' statements and some words from Ardolf himself.

Dressed in orange jail antimicrobial clothing and sometimes wearing two pairs of glasses simultaneously, Ardolf, a widower, began his comments by apologizing to the Kostolniks, his own three children and his family, some of whom were in the courtroom.

But he spent most of his time talking about himself, a trait that had prompted Rank to complain at a hearing in May that Ardolf was a narcissist unable to show true remorse or feeling for his victims.

"It's been difficult for me to eat. I've felt no enjoyment," Ardolf told Frank of his time awaiting trial in the Sherburne County jail. He described his days alone in 23-hour lockdown, said jail food "is always horrible" and complained that "the beds are like taking a sleeping bag and sleeping on the garage floor."

He reeled off a list of recent prison sentences he'd read about in the paper - including the 10-year sentence meted out to former auto mogul Denny Hecker this year - and said that relatively speaking, his crime wasn't as bad as those of some people sent to prison for terms less than what he was facing.

"I didn't kill anyone," he said.
...
When it comes to sentencing, federal judges use by guidelines that assess scores for various crimes.

Frank noted that when Ardolf's points were computed, the guidelines called for a maximum of 15 years and eight months. But the judge said a harsher punishment - 216 months, or 18 years - was called for.

"Anything any less than that would not serve the purposes of justice," he told Ardolf, who stood before the judge, hands clasped in front of him.

The judge also fined Ardolf $10,000 and told him that when his prison time was done, he'd have to register as a sex offender.