GoKawiilA 25-year-old Tennessee man avoided prison time after pleading guilty to accessing government systems with stolen login credentials and boasting of the deed on an Instagram account with the handle, @ihackedthegovernment.
Defendant Nicholas Moore accessed user accounts on the US Supreme Court’s electronic filing system, AmeriCorps, and the Veterans Administration Health System. He then publicly posted screenshots of the users’ personal information to his @ihackedthegovernment account on Instagram. It’s not clear how he obtained the stolen login information.
Moore was sentenced to a year of probation today in US District Court for the District of Columbia. The US government had requested 36 months of probation for the unauthorized access that took place in 2023 from August to October. The government sentencing recommendation did not request any jail time or a fine.
“I made a mistake,” Nicholas Moore told US District Judge Beryl Howell today, appearing remotely at a sentencing hearing, according to The Hill. “I am truly sorry. I respect laws, and I want to be a good citizen.”
US calls defendant “a vulnerable young man”
Explaining why it did not seek prison time, the government told the court that “Moore is a vulnerable young man with long-term disabilities” and that he took responsibility for his actions. His “conduct must not be taken lightly, but his actions stopped short of a level that would justify incarceration for a defendant with Moore’s mental health and medical needs,” the government said in a sentencing memorandum.
Moore’s guilty plea in January related to “hacking the electronic filing system of the US Supreme Court at least 25 times and additionally hacking accounts at AmeriCorps and the Veterans Administration Health System,” US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office said at the time. Moore was charged with fraud and related activity in connection with computers, a misdemeanor that can be punished by up to one year of prison time and a fine of up to $100,000.