A search engine is to continue to let an employee work as he prepares to begin a four-year prison sentence for building a botnet. Mahalo.com described the decision to let John Kenneth Schiefer continue working as “compassionate”.

Schiefer pleaded guilty to charges involve hacking, wiretapping and fraud and was this week sentenced to four years imprisonment. He is the first person to be convicted  federally under wiretapping laws for building a botnet.

Schiefer used a network of infected computers to steal information from sites such as PayPal, redirecting money to his own accounts. He also took a payoff off $19,000 to install adware on computers without permission. According to his statements to the FBI under questioning, he also launched denial of service attacks including one which took the Los Angeles Times Web site offline.

Oddly enough, Schiefer didn’t mention this when he applied for a job at ‘human created’ search engine Mahalo.

Amazingly Schiefer had already been charged and agreed to plead guilty at the eventual trial before going for the job. Mahalo staff put him through several interviews and ran a series of reference checks but, despite working for a search engine, it appears nobody bothered to Google his name. Had they done so they’d have read numerous stories about his offenses, including right here at Blorge.

Mahalo CEO John Calacanis says the firm did not discover Schiefer’s criminal past until several months. He says he considered firing Schiefer, but insists he has reformed his ways and is no longer the ‘angry stupid kid’ who launched the attacks. Schiefer will continue working until beginning his sentence and Calacanis plans to offer him work when he leaves jail.

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Entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 4:40 pm under Crime, Hacking, Legal.

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