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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

It is shady, but it's interesting that it's "wire fraud" to me. The laws allow for shell companies, and I assume he was paying. And the thing he was skirting feels more like a TOS, contract rule, etc. It doesn't seem much different from things large companies do for tax purposes, etc. They can sentence up to 20 years per count for wire fraud.

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You can set up all of the shell companies you want, but what you can't do is fake notarized statements and induce others to take actions based on them by transmitting them "over the wires." That's what he is being charged with here, because otherwise ARIN would have said "all of these companies are owned by the same person and our rules don't permit address allocations in this manner."

> Each of those shell companies involved the production of notarized affidavits in the names of people who didn’t exist. As a result, Lydon was able to charge Golestan with 20 counts of wire fraud — one for each payment made by the phony companies that bought the IP addresses from ARIN.

That's the part that becomes wire fraud, says the OP. Faked notarizations of people who don't exist.

If he's fraudulently making up people to fake ownership then it's not what companies do legally. It's fraud.

There is hardly anything that doesn't evolve the internet one way or another. Haven't all the frauds become wire fraud now? Does this legislation still make any sense?

I'm not bothered. It's still fraud, and sometimes it's the only thing that sticks (c.f. the Holmes trial).

It is odd that it's up to 20 years per count, but what was actually done ranges from something like a misdemeanor to robbing someone of their life savings.

That's the statutory limit. The actual sentence depends on the nature and magnitude of the crime, according to the sentencing guidelines.

https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

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