Feds net P.C. man in botnet scheme
A federal grand jury indicted Robert Matthew Bentley on Tuesday with “hacking” into Newell Rubbermaid computers and spreading Internet advertising through a computer virus.
Authorities filed the indictment Wednesday at the Panama City federal courthouse because Bentley was living in the area at the time of the alleged crimes. A FBI news release lists Bentley as being a Panama City resident.
Bentley, 21, is accused of compromising computers used by Rubbermaid and using them to set up a “botnet,” a system in which computers under his control respond to autonomous commands to seek out other computers through the Internet and spread advertising for a Western European company. Each new infected computer would register with the advertising company, which would pay Bentley a commission, authorities said.
According to the indictment, Bentley and his co-conspirators collected more than $5,000 between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2006. The indictment says Bentley conspired with at least one person in Philadelphia.
Specifically, Bentley is charged with using “botnets” he created and controlled to install “adware” on a protected computer belonging to Newell Rubbermaid, without the company’s knowledge, to obtain profits “in the form of illicit commission payments.”
“Voluminous network traffic generated by (the botnet) scanning had the effect of simultaneously limiting or even preventing the compromised computers from functioning normally,” according to the indictment.
Possible penalties and/or fines were not listed in court documents. A court date is not scheduled in the case.
Bentley is incarcerated in a Lake City prison on aggravated assault convictions out of Bay County, according to the Florida Department of Corrections Web site. The new charges are not listed, but an officer answering the phone at the prison said the charges were too new to be listed.
Bentley’s indictment was part of “Operation Bot Roast II,” an international cyber crimes investigation, the news release stated.
The operation previously led to the conviction of Azizbek Takhirovich Mamadjanov, 21, whose address was listed as Florida. He was sentenced in June in U.S. District Court, Northern District of Florida, to 24 months in prison for his involvement in a Midwest bank phishing scheme. The Panama City Beach Police Department was part of the investigation, the release stated.