Hacker who targeted Ohio football website sentenced to two years in prison

A computer hacker who targeted an Ohio high school football fan website more than four years ago was sentenced to two years in federal prison on Wednesday. 

Deric Lostutter, who went by “KYAnonymous” online, was sentenced to two years jail time in federal court in Lexington, Ky., for conspiring to illegally access a computer without authorization and making false statements to an FBI agent, according to the Justice Department. 

Lostutter, who is from Winchester, Ky., pleaded guilty to the offenses in November. In December 2012, he hacked into a website for fans of the Steubenville High School football team, purportedly to highlight arrests made of two football players for an infamous rape earlier the same year. 

{mosads}Lostutter, conspiring with another hacker named Noah McHugh, intended “to bring attention to the August 2012 rape, to harass and intimidate people, and to gain notoriety and publicity for their online identities,” his plea agreement said.

Lostutter created a video to post on the site and wrote a manifesto in order to intimidate people, threatening to reveal personal information about Steubenville students. He also falsely accused the administrator of the website of being involved in child pornography, according to the DOJ. He initially lied to the FBI in 2013, claiming not to have written the manifesto or breached the website.

“Ensuring proper online security and privacy is critically important to all of us,” acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky Carlton Shier said Wednesday. 

“Computer hacking and cyber harassment create real victims, causing enormous damage to real people, organizations, and institutions,” Shier said. “This type of conduct simply cannot be tolerated and the great work of our FBI partners in this matter validates our ongoing efforts to protect the public from illegal computer intrusions and other cybercrime.” 

Lostutter cast himself as a vigilante who sought to prevent a cover-up of the rape case by government and the media, though officials pushed back on that notion in court. 

“He certainly was not a white knight in this matter,” said U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves in court on Wednesday during the sentencing, according to the local Lexington Herald Leader. 

The August 2012 rape of a 16-year-old-girl in Steubenville attracted national media attention. Two high school football players were found guilty of the rape in March 2013.