Ryan Neil Green, 32, of Paducah, Kentucky, received two years probation and 50 hours of community service after pleading guilty to creating and selling a spam botnet on the infamous Darkode hacking forum.
According to court documents, between 2006 and 2012, Green built a botnet of 77,000 bots, which he rented to other cybercriminals on Darkode, a forum where various categories of hackers and scammers met to buy or sell malware, hacking tools, and even drugs.
Green was one of 70 hackers arrested early last year around the world after officers infiltrated and shut down the Darkode forum.
Despite not being an active participant in recent transactions, Green's username and past activity were found in the forum's archive, and he was arrested and later charged.
Green easily escaped without a prison sentence because it turned out that the judge changed his life and he abandoned any illegal activities.
Both the prosecution and the judge acknowledged that Green had indeed abandoned his former life as a hacker after the birth of his daughter and subsequently founded his own web design and SEO company called Rygre Digital Marketing.
Because Green had turned his life around on his own, there was no reason for him to be punished with a prison sentence.
The judge also doesn't want to prevent Green from providing for his daughter and didn't want to risk losing his business while he was in prison.
Assistant U.S. Attorney James Kitchen, who led the takedown of Darkode along with the FBI, told Trib Live that Green cooperated with the investigation from start to finish. That was another factor that helped Green receive a lighter sentence.
In May, another Darkode forum user from Louisiana, who was arrested at the same time as Green, was sentenced to a year in prison. This user also rented botnets on Darkode.
