Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 1-5

Chicago Tribune Section 1 Tuesday, November 1, 2016 Hacker faces prison time in Canadian attack STACEY WESCOTTCHICAGO TRIBUNE The testimony of Elsie Fry, above, sister of Jacquelyn Greco, was key to the prosecution's murder case. Woman found guilty of killing husband in 1979 the Metropolitan Correctional Center, French drafted a memo laying out ideas "about how institutions can improve computer security," she said. According to a criminal complaint filed against French, the teen quickly rose to become a well-known player in the hacking community after the raid on his home in 2011. Over the next several years, NullCrew was linked to attacks on universities in Virginia and Hawaii, the U.S. State Department, cable giant Comcast and the online search engine Spo-keo, records show.

On April 20, 2014 a date celebrated as a holiday by pot smokers around the world French orchestrated the release of a massive amount of sensitive data stolen from several entities, including a university, video-game company and credit union, according to the prosecutors' filing. "I hope you like open source as much as we do," he tweeted to the university. "A hefty list of 1,000,000 files on your master server is about to be shared." The tweet included a profane hashtag that became a signature of NullCrew: TheSystem. jmeisnerchicagotribune.com Twitter jmetr22b notorious group of cyber-criminals known as Null-Crew, which prosecutors allege was responsible for a destructive hacking spree on dozens of businesses, nonprofits and government entities. French, 22, who operated under the screen name "Orbit," has pleaded guilty to one count of intentionally damaging protected computers belonging to a large telecommunications company in Canada identified in several news reports as Bell Canada According to his plea declaration, French and other NullCrew hackers stole usernames and passwords of more than 12,000 of the company's customers using a server based in Naperville.

French announced the hack in a tweet in February 2014, directing followers to a website where he had posted the sensitive information, according to the plea. Federal prosecutors say French deserves a stiff punishment because of his years hacking the Mor-ristown, native began at just 14, they said and the prominent role he played in high-profile cyb-erattacks. They are asking U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman to send a message to other hackers by sentencing French to up to seven years in prison. French could have changed course after the FBI raided his home in December 2011 as part of an investigation into a series of cyberattacks conducted by TeamPoison, another hacking group with which he was affiliated, according to prosecutors.

Authorities searched French's home and confiscated his computer, but he was not charged. "Rather than being led away in handcuffs, he was offered a second chance at leading a law-abiding life," Assistant U.S. Attorney William Ridgway wrote in a sentencing memo. "Despite being cut a break, and rather than heed the FBI's warning, the defendant upped the ante, proceeding on a far more destructive course and demonstrating a complete disregard for the law." French's attorney, Can-dace Jackson, however, asked the judge for a sentence of no more than three years, saying in a recent court filing that the government was overstating his role in TeamPoison, which had caught the FBI's attention after a series of cyberattacks on the United Nations, NATO and NASA. Since his arrest, French has begun to "embrace treatment" and now wants to use his computer skills for good purposes, Jackson said.

While in custody at By Jason Meisner Chicago Tribune Timothy Justen French had already been warned once by the FBI to stay away from computer hacking when he was caught in an online chat two years ago talking about his desire to hit higher-profile targets, including city traffic grids and government intelligence satellites, federal prosecutors say. "My proposition (is) to 'hack' servers that actually matter," French wrote to a colleague in April 2014, according to a recent court filing. French, who at the time was 19 and operating out of his grandmother's basement in rural Tennessee, seemed bored with the usual low-hanging fruit He told his friend that as they were chatting, he was hacking into several servers at once, including one belonging to a university that he'd decided to attack "just for the (expletive) of it," according to the filing. "I'd be so (expletive) if I got raided now," he said, according to the filing. "Hacking like five servers at once.

Three United Nations-based two universities." On Tuesday, French faces sentencing at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago for his role in a By George Houde Chicago Tribune It didn't take long for Jacquelyn Greco to raise suspicions among investigators and family members after her husband, Carl Gaimari, was shot to death in their Inverness home in 1979, a crime so shocking that it made the front page of the Tribune at the time. The first thing Greco said to her sister when she arrived on the scene, according to testi mony, was, "I didn't do it." Within days, Greco had moved her boyfriend, a Chicago police officer, into the large suburban home where the crime occurred Greco while she and three of her four children were tied up in a closet. Within a few months, she remarried. Still, it took almost four decades before Greco would be held accountable for the crime.

That day finally came Monday, when a jury determined Greco knew of the plot to kill her husband and to stage it to look like a home invasion and burglary. After about two hours of deliberations, jurors found Greco guilty of first-degree murder. "I never thought this day would come," Gaimari's niece, Jane Keenan, said after the verdict was announced. "We always knew she did it. It's really sad how it affected the family all these years.

Today is a good day for our family." Greco was stoic as the guilty verdict was announced, but her public defenders said she broke down when she was brought back to a holding cell at the Rolling Meadows branch courthouse. They said they will appeal. She faces 20 to 40 years in prison when she is sentenced Dec. 19, but could serve 50 percent of her sentence with good behavior behind bars. Still, at age 69, Greco could spend the rest of her life behind bars.

Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Ethan Holland said Greco "got away with it for 37 years." Throughout the week-long trial, prosecutors portrayed Greco as a cold-hearted schemer who went along with the plan to get rid of her husband because she wanted to marry her boyfriend, now-retired Chicago Officer Sam Greco, but didn't want to divorce Gaimari because she feared she would be left with no money. She had hired Sam Greco as a private investigator to look into her husband's suspected affairs. During closing arguments earlier Monday, fellow Assistant State's Attorney Maria McCarthy had said the fact that Jacquelyn Greco was tied up during the murder shouldn't obscure her involvement. "We don't know who the other people are in this case," said McCarthy, referring to the gunmen, who have never been identified. That's not necessary, she said, to prove Greco is culpable.

Defense attorneys had sought to underscore what they said was scant evidence of Greco's guilt. They noted the lack of physical evidence tying the murder to Greco. And they said there could be other reasonable explanations for things that prosecutors said were indicators of Greco being in on a plot, like the back door being left open or that the intruders seemed to know where to find guns in the house. Yet recordings prosecutors played of phone calls Greco had with her sister, Elsie Fry, shortly before Greco's 2013 arrest, apparently had a big impact on jurors. In them, Greco seemingly begs her sister not to tell author ities they talked about the specifics of the murder plot months before Gaimari was killed.

Greco didn't know the recordings were being made; Fry reluctantly cooperated with authorities, though defense attorneys contend Fry was angry at her sister for having sued her over a financial loan. "You can listen to the (taped) conversations all day long. It doesn't prove anything," Cook County Assistant Public Defender Caroline Glennon told jurors. Greco's lawyers also tried to play down the suspicions aroused by her quick remarriage to Sam Greco, who showed up at the crime scene shortly after Gaimari was killed. Defense attorneys say Sam Greco was simply offering support to Jacquelyn after the trauma of her husband's murder.

Authorities said Jacquelyn Greco purposefully had her then-13-year-old daughter stay home from school that day so she would have a witness to the home intrusion. The girl, along with her two young siblings, were tied up in the closet by the masked intruders while they waited for Gaimari to come home from his job at the Chicago Board of Trade. The oldest of the Gaimari children, a 15-year-old daughter, arrived from school to find the home in disarray and her family tied up. "A plot to kill your husband is unconscionable. But when you include your 15-year-old, your 13-year-old, your 5-year-old and your baby, that takes it to a whole new level of depravity," Holland said.

Sam and Jacquelyn Greco moved to California a short time after the murder with her children, but they eventually returned to Chicago and for a time ran a bar on Chicago's Northwest Side. They divorced in 1990, though Jacquelyn Greco kept her second husband's name. Sam Greco has not been charged in connection with Gaimari's death. He was expected to be called to testify on Jacquelyn Greco's behalf. But in a surprise twist Friday, her public defenders announced that they would call no witnesses in her defense and rested their case.

Two of Gaimari's brothers and other relatives embraced after the verdict. Mike Gaimari said he found the evidence against Greco "overwhelming" and said the family "always suspected" she was involved. John Gaimari called the trial "surreal." "There was a time we thought this would never happen," he said. "AH we wanted was justice for Carl and his children." George Houde is a freelance reporter. SALE IS 30-40 OFF FOR HER AND 40 OFF FOR HIM.

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