Last year, we had a discussion around the movie-like backstory behind Albert Gonzalez, and a few other hackers, who were accused of gathering the largest number of credit card numbers ever, in a series of security breaches. One of the key points, of course, was that Gonzalez was on the government payroll at the time of the hacks, acting as an informant and a security expert. Gonzalez took a plea bargain, and ended up with a twenty-year sentence a little over a year ago. However, he's now trying to go back on that, and is claiming that he actually had government authorization for the hacks themselves, and complained that his lawyers failed to defend him properly (a common complaint among those who lose). The filing is an interesting read, and given what I've seen recently about government plea bargain deals, it definitely would not surprise me to find out that the government offered something in a plea deal that it did not live up to -- and that it put pressure on Gonzalez to accept it. Of course, chances are that this appeal is going nowhere fast. The likelihood of success is pretty damn slim, so I fully expect that this appeal will go nowhere.
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