US COMPUTER SERVERS STOLEN FROM VERISIGNLawFuel - law, attorney, lawyer, legal news and legal resources24 June - LAWFUEL - The Law News Network - The United States Attorney's Office announced that a federal grand jury in San Jose today indicted Emmett Jones, 35, of Falls Church, Virginia, and Carr Johnson, 35, of Woodbridge, Virginia in connection with a scheme to steal computer servers from a Virginia-based Verisign Inc. warehouse and cause them to be transported in interstate commerce.

According to the indictment, Jones would steal various IBM and Penguin computer servers from Verisign's warehouse in Virginia and sell them to Johnson. Johnson would then sell the servers to several individuals, who would sometimes place them for sale on eBay. As a result of this scheme, the indictment alleges that Jones and Johnson caused Verisign to lose more than $120,000 worth of computer equipment. In the indictment, Jones and Johnson are charged in three counts with causing the interstate transportation of stolen property, namely IBM 330 and 335 servers, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2314, from Virginia to the Northern District of California.

The maximum penalties under 18 U.S.C. § 2314 are 10 years imprisonment, $250,000 fine, 3 years supervised release, and a $100 special assessment. However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. 3553. An indictment only contains allegations and these defendants, as with all defendants, must be presumed innocent unless and until convicted.

The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the REACT Task Force in San Jose. The investigation was overseen by the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) Unit of the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. Shashi H. Kewalramani is the Assistant U.S. Attorney from the CHIP Unit who is prosecuting the case with the assistance of Legal Assistants Mimi Lam and Tracey Andersen.

A copy of this press release may be found on the U.S. Attorney's Office's website at www.usdoj.gov/usao/can. Related court documents and information may be found on the District Court website at www.cand.uscourts.gov or on http://pacer.cand.uscourts/gov .