Romanian hacker Guccifer gets seven-year jail term, no parole

A Romanian hacker who went by the nickname Guccifer was sentenced to seven years in jail without parole, for having hacked into the e-mail accounts of the Romanian Intelligence Service SRI director George Maior, of MEP Corina Cretu, as well as of several movie and TV stars. The decision however is not final and can be further appealed. Neither Maior, nor Cretu were part of the trial, and the state prosecution was the accusation. The trial however was sped up as the hacker confessed to his crimes. The Romanian, by his real name Marcel Lazăr Lehel, got three years in jail for hacking the emails of Maior and of Cretu. The court decided to merge the two convictions, and add an extra year, resulting into a four-year jail term for these offences. The hacker has a previous jail term, but with parole, dating from February 2012, which was added to the most recent one. This upped the term to seven years in jail. Guccifer has been on preventive arrest since January 22, when he was caught in the Western Romanian city of Arad. After confessing to his crimes, Guccifer said in court:

“Probably, everyone had their e-mail broken into one day. I, personally, had five accounts broken into and did not go to prosecutors to complain. The deeds are not by far so serious. These were three personal accounts, not work-related,” according to Mediafax.

The Romanian was found to have broken into George Maior's Yahoo and Gmail accounts, and sent him an email to his work address containing data he had extracted from his personal accounts. In the past, Guccifer is believed to have accessed the e-mail accounts of international officials as well, among which Colin Powell, members of the Bush family, Rockefellers and Obama administration officials. Lehel went by the nicknames Guccifer and Little Smoke. Not only did he target Romanian actors, public figures, but international as well: actor Steve Martin, actress Mariel Hemingway, among others. Hacker Guccifer breaks into Romania intelligence chief’s email, after exposing alleged love affair between Colin Powell and Romanian MEP editor@romania-insider.com