Just days after prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia recommended that Conor Fitzpatrick, aka “Pompompurin,” be sentenced to at least 15 years in prison, District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema sentenced him to time served and supervised release.
As DataBreaches previously reported, Fitzpatrick, the owner of the first BreachedForums site, pleaded guilty in July to three charges:
18 U.S.C. § 1029(b)(2) and 3559(g)(1) Conspiracy to Commit Access Device Fraud;
18 U.S.C. § 1029(a)(6) and 2 Access Device Fraud – Unauthorized Solicitation; and
18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B) and (b)(2) Possession of Child Pornography
Based on sentencing guidelines, the prosecution argued that a minimum sentence of 188 months was warranted but that the judge might want to impose an even longer sentence.
To the shock of many of those following this case online, Judge Brinkema sentenced Fitzpatrick to time served on each of the three counts (concurrent) and then Supervised Release of 20 years with special conditions.
The sentence of time served on the three counts is surprising, given that he could have been sentenced to 20 years in prison just for the child pornography charge alone. And time served is usually after a defendant has actually been detained awaiting trial. In Fitzpatrick’s case, he was not detained for any length of time because he was out on bond for almost the entire time between his arrest and sentencing, with the exception of the last few weeks after he was re-arrested for violating the conditions of his bond. So why no prison time for all cybercrime he pleaded guilty to committing? And why no prison time for the child pornography charge he also pleaded guilty to?
The Supervised Release terms are significant ..
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