26-YEAR-OLD TURKISH HACKER SENTENCED TO RECORD TOTAL OF 334 YEARS IN PRISON FOR CYBERCRIMES

On January 10/16, 26-year-old Turkish hacker Onur Kopçak was sentenced to a record setting 334 years in prison for his cybercrimes, the theft and sale of credit card information with 11 more blackhats.

The 334 years are actually the sum total of (only) two separate sentences. The first is from 2013 when he was sentenced to 199 years, 7 months, and10 days (???) in prison for similar charges. However, “[a]t the time, Kopçakwas convicted for an array of [other] charges including identity fraud, access device fraud, website forgery and wire fraud. (1)” No doubt these other charges played into the severity of Kopçak’s original sentence.

This means that Kopçak’s new sentence adds 134 years to what I think we can all agree was already a needlessly long sentence (2). It’s likely that the second sentence was not so much about making his sentence longer as it was about sacrificing him to make a statement. 

What statement, you ask? Well, I have it on good authority it sounds a little something like this:

Stop with all the cybercrime, you jerks!!!!!!!!

In all seriousness though, I’ll be surprised if this excessively expensive ploy stops or even slows down any cybercriminals. Still, I sincerely wish the Turkish government and people all the best in their goal to cut down cybercrime. Virtually all of us are on the very same mission, wouldn’t you say?

Do you agree with the severity of Kopçak’s sentences? Let us know your opinion by emailing me at czs@ethicalhacking.com and maybe we’ll publish it!

1. https://hacked.com/hacker-26-sees-record-prison-sentence-of-336-years/ 2. Because there’s no way he’ll live for 199 years, let alone 334! Image from https://rstforums.com/secimg.php?url=http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/hacker-convicted-334-years.jpg