Did you see the part at the top where the CEO admitted to being all of those "customers"? They were playing a shell game, and while this guy didn't do the criminal activities he definitely was working for the "legitimate front end" of a larger criminal organization.

I've seen a similar scenario play out before with another spammer and the kind of people he hired.

This was later proved to be true when the CEO(Amir), admitted in the ARIN(American Registry for Internet Numbers) trial, he was really behind these entities."

But your claim was that this was unrelated to the trial. The response was that, no, it actually corroborated the core allegation in the Micfo case.

It's true that it alleges other stuff. That doesn't make the IP fraud point somehow not corroboration.

>But your claim was that this was unrelated to the trial. The response was that, no, it actually corroborated the core allegation in the Micfo case.

Now you're misreading both OP and the response to my comment. ghostbrainalpha claimed that the OP says the CEO was the same as the customers that were allegedly committing crimes like spamming. The OP does not say this.

>That doesn't make the IP fraud point somehow not corroboration.

OP never mentions this as one of the crimes he's listing. He lists:

1. Mishandling of warrants

2. Child endangerment

3. Enabling spamming

4. Enabling ToS violations

None of the things OP says are crimes are actually illegal, and none of them were at issue during the trial. That's what I pointed out.

What? He says it was done for customers. Not for shell companies.

>And yet you're all like "I can't believe anyone thinks this is related!" based on the fact that some other stuff alleged (which seems reasonably credible to me, and also plausibly illegal if you infer some context) wasn't part of the trial. But... so what?

My main point is that nothing alleged in OP is actually illegal. OP implying otherwise is just ignorant of the law. Unethical, perhaps, although I'd defend at least some of the stuff described. The fact that it mentions the trial and mentions the (legal) practice of having multiple shell companies doesn't change anything. They weren't charged with having shell companies, but with using those companies to commit fraud. OP mentions none of that fraud.

>I don't understand why you're saying Child Endangerment isn't "actually illegal", it's literally a term of art in the field used in statutes all across the US! Obviously that's not proof of a crime here, but... no, you're wrong, "child endangerment" is an actual crime.

I'm saying the actions alleged in OP are not illegal, including the actions described in the child endangerment section.

The "customers" that just happen to be the very same shell companies described at trial, engaged in the very same shenannigans with "their" IP addresses? Those customers?

I mean, come on. I think at this point you're just retreating into pedantry, arguing that the linked article doesn't meet appropriate evidentiary standards when presented in a blog post and therefore we need to assume that Micfo is innocent in the sense of this one article not meeting a sufficient burden of proof. So... OK.

But anyone with a brain can see that this is a personal story about exactly what was going on, and thus that it's clearly describing related activities. Some of which, again, were clearly illegal.

Where are you getting this from? I admittedly have not watched the trial or read through trial transcripts. Are you asserting that the trial produced evidence that the shell companies mentioned were involved in spamming (as opposed to renting out the IP addresses to customers who ultimately used them for spamming?) I haven't seen this allegation in any of the articles I've read about the case. The blog post doesn't identify any customers.

>But anyone with a brain can see that this is a personal story about exactly what was going on, and thus that it's clearly describing related activities. Some of which, again, were clearly illegal.

No need for personal attacks. It's far from clear that anything described in the blog post is illegal. I already went point by point in my initial comment on this. You're making allegations the blog post never made that Micfo was itself involved in spamming. I doubt this, being as it wasn't charged and nobody but commenters in this thread have alleged it.

OP appears to be saying that the "channel partners" were the shell companies. Hence why Micfo was responding as the channel partners and why subpoenas went to them.

He also says:

>Our largest customer would submit PTR deletions, additions, and changes to our channel partners, I would log into the channel partner portal, and recieve them then act on them.

It's clear he's not saying that this customer was a channel partner/shell company. I don't know how you could possibly read the post and come off with that impression.

> Nothing wrong with this ...

Depending on where they're located, failure to report certain types of crime to law enforcement may itself be a crime.

Just like how you would get fired if you sent out a legal demand letter to another company without legal being in the loop. Law enforcement is no different: they are not your friend.

Law enforcement doesn't even have that aligned incentive. You might say you are aligned in that you want the law to be followed, but their incentive is more along the lines of making sure they bring in and prosecute cases. If the only way to make the case work is to throw the company that reported it (and by extension, its employees) into the grinder because that's all they think they can successfully do, then that's likely what they'll do.

For blatant issues (i.e. there's a dead body) you'd still be expected to act on your own, but on any greyer area you'd be covered.