Credit Card Hacker Gets 20 Years in Prison

Albert Gonzalez, the man who stole more than 90 million credit and debit card numbers from American retail giant TJX, was sentenced to 20 years in prison yesterday. It is the longest-ever sentence for a computer crime in America. Prosecutors hope the sentence will serve as a deterrent. “What matters is that teenagers and young people not look up to him,” the prosecutor said.

Most of Gonzalez’s crimes were committed while he was earning $75,000 per year as an undercover informant for the U.S. Secret Service. The defense had argued for the minimum sentence, 15 years, claiming the 28-year-old was a computer addict with Asperger's Syndrome. A psychiatrist who examined him for prosecutors, however, found no evidence of either condition, Wired notes.
(More TJX stories.)