Phishing is an attempt to obtain sensitive information, such as account passwords, by posing as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
A former U.S. State Department employee was sentenced on March 21 to nearly five years in federal prison for hacking into college women's email accounts from his computer at the American Embassy in London and threatening to expose their sexually explicit photos.
Michael C. Ford, 36, sent "phishing" emails to women — including some at Ball State — specifically targeting members of sororities and aspiring models.
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Ford hacked into at least 200 victims’ accounts and forwarded at least 1,300 stolen emails containing sexually explicit photographs to himself, according to court documents.
U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross sentenced Ford to four years and nine months in prison, followed by three years on supervised release. However, Ross granted a request to delay the start of his prison term until after Aug. 1 so he can be present when his wife is due to give birth to their second child in late July.
In total, Ford's charges could have carried a maximum of 100 years in prison. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of eight years, but defense attorneys suggested less than four years.
Ford told the judge he was feeling small and looked down upon in his personal and professional lives, so he resorted to an online world where the people he was interacting with didn't seem real.
Ford, who cried while addressing the judge, said he wanted to get caught so he would be fired and could leave an unbearable work situation without having to say he was a quitter, adding that he suffered from severe depression and suicidal thoughts.
"What I did was a low and cowardly act by a person who was desperate," he said in court on March 21.
Ford said he's "truly sorry" to his victims.
Ford was arrested at an Atlanta airport in May and pled guilty in December to nine counts of cyberstalking, seven counts of computer hacking to extort and one count of wire fraud.
Ford claimed he was a member of Google's account "deletion team," which doesn't exist, to get victims to hand over their passwords, prosecutors said.
After accessing the email accounts, Ford used the women's passwords to access their email and social media accounts to search for sexually explicit photographs and personal information. He then sent messages threatening to put the images online or send them to the women's families and friends if they didn't do what he wanted, a practice known as ‘sextortion’ in the legal field.
In a single day last April, he sent 800 phishing emails, and 180 follow-up messages to potential victims who hadn't responded to his initial email, prosecutors said. On another day in April, he sent initial harassing emails with photos attached to 98 new victims.
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