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United States of America v. Ancheta (U.S. vs. Ancheta, 06-051 (C.D. Cal.)) (United States District Court for the Central District of California 2006) is the name of a lawsuit against Jeanson James Ancheta of Downey, California by the U.S. Government. This is the first U.S botnet prosecution in history.

Jeanson James Ancheta
Jeason James Anchenta was a 20 year old high school drop out who lived in Downey, California. He found software online and decided that he was going to create a botnet army. He setup a website where her rented his computer zombies to hackers so that they could employ them to fulfill whatever job they had at hand.

Case Summary
The case was the first prosecution in the United States of America where a individual was sentenced to prison for profiting from the use of botnets that were used maliciously to launch destructive attacks and send large quantities of spam (electronic) across the Internet resulting in installation of adware on remote computers. The prison sentence is the longest known sentence (57 months) for a defendant who has spread malware.

Ancheta pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate to the Computer Fraud Abuse Act conspiring to violate the CAN-SPAM Act and causing damage to computers used by the federal government of the United States in national defence and accessing a protected computer without authorization to commit fraud.

Furthermore Ancheta pleaded guilty to more than 30 separate transaction earning more than $3000 by selling access to his botnet army.

Trial
Because of the nature of the information at stake in the trial, two separate trials were conducted, one in public, and the other in camera. The defendants (Morland and the editors of The Progressive) would not accept security clearances (which would put restraints on their free speech), and so were not present at the in camera hearings. Their lawyers did accept clearances so that they could participate in the trial, but were forbidden from conveying the information to their clients.

A detailed account of the case and the events leading up to it was published by four nuclear scientists who participated in the public and in-camera trials and their preparation.