Albert Gonzalez has less than one week to find out how many years he will spend in prison, and if the government has its way, it will be 25 years. And as to the defense’s claims that Gonzalez should be shown some consideration in the sentencing guidelines due to Asperger’s Disorder, well, the prosecution expert pretty much made mincemeat of the defense expert’s report.
Kevin Poulsen of Threat Level reviews the recent history and events:
Computer hacker Albert Gonzalez deserves a quarter-century behind bars for leading a gang of cyberthieves who stole tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers from a transaction processor and several giant retail chains, federal prosecutors argued in a court filing Thursday night.
“[T]he sentences would be the longest ever imposed in an identity theft case and among the longest imposed for a financial crime, which is appropriate because Gonzalez was at the center of the largest and most costly series of identity thefts in the nation’s history,” wrote Boston-based Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann. “He knowingly victimized a group of people whose population exceeded that of many major cities and some states.”
Read more on Threat Level.
The government’s sentencing memo can be found here.
Because one of the issues is whether Gonzalez suffered from diminished capacity due to Asperger’s Disorder, the government today asked the court for guidance as to whether both sides should have their psychiatric experts available in court during the sentencing hearing. The defense expert witness, Barry H. Roth, M.D. had indicated that Gonzalez’s history was consistent with Asperger’s Disorder (report here), while the prosecution’s expert witness, Mark J. Mills, JD, MD, disagreed, noting in particular that Gonzalez’s social skills and ability to form relationships easily argued strongly against one of the required (and main) diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s (report here).
Barring any further delays, Gonzalez is scheduled for sentencing March 25 at 2:00 PM in Courtroom 19 before Judge Patti B. Saris.