former teen hacker pleads to new charges

Asians behaving badly... hacker edition! Last week in Manhattan, 25-year-old Van T. Dinh pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of computer fraud and identity theft. He was accused of cracking a New York-based currency exchange service and gifting himself more than $100,000: Former Teen Stock Swindler Pleads to New Hacking Charges.

But this isn't Dinh's first run-in with the law. He's a former teenage hacker who previously served prison time for an online stock-trading scheme:

Dinh, who lives in Pennsylvania, gained notoriety in 2003, when, as a 19-year-old stock trader, he found a novel way to unload a bad investment in thousands of worthless stock derivatives: He hacked into another trader’s account, and bought the options from his own account.

The gambit made Dinh the first person charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with a fraud involving both computer hacking and identity theft. He was sentenced in 2004 to 13 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

I guess he didn't really learn his lesson the first time around. Last December, he started engaging in some more high-tech scheming, and large amounts of money began appearing in his accounts. The FBI traced the hacking to an IP address assigned to the home Dinh shares with his mother in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, and Dinh was soon arrested after that.

And here we are again. He's currently being held without bail at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York as a "danger to the community by hacking activities," among other reasons. More here: Recidivist stock fraud hacker pleads guilty to ID theft.