27-year-old Fidel Salinas of Dona, Texas is accused of illegally attempting to access several Internet servers to include government assets. He is thought to be affiliated with the notorious online hacking group dubbed “Anonymous.”
According to court documents obtained by Breitbart Texas, Salinas is facing 14 hacking charges for trying to access websites belonging to the La Joya School District, Hidalgo County, and The McAllen Monitor newspaper. Each charge carries potential jail time of up to ten years.
A criminal complaint states that Salinas tried to hack the Hidalgo County’s management page thousands of times on January 5, 2012.
The complaint stated, “During the early morning, Salinas made over 14,000 attempts to log into their website server…The intrusion attempts were severe enough to prevent the administrators from accessing their website for at least half a day; subsequently, this prevented employees from managing their own website.”
It allegedly cost the county $10,620.32 to repair the damages caused by Salinas’ hacking attempts.
Investigators were ultimately able to track down Salinas using his IP address, according to the complaint. When confronted, Salinas said he hacked the county website “after he saw a flaw.” He claimed that he was going to relay any errors he found to Hidalgo County officials as a “courtesy.” Officers subsequently confiscated multiple computers and hard drives from the residence.
Upon further investigation, officials claim to have found Salinas’ chat logs relating to Anonymous. More specifically, he was conversing with members of the group’s “Operation Anti-Security section.”
When questioned, Salinas admitted to posting the following on his Facebook page on January 22, 2012:
“F**k you corrupt officials and politicians. When someone tries to give you advice that your servers aren’t secure and said person doesn’t modify, access, or download ‘restricted’ information. I believe you say thank you instead of being afraid of what you don’t know by getting an invalid warrant, arresting, and wrongfully jacking all his electronics. -We do not forgive, we do not forget, divide by zero we fall, EXPECT US!”
The last quote is a common saying among Anonymous members, according to the complaint.
But Salinas’ attorney, Alma Garza, insists that her client has no connections to the hacking group.
“They can’t make a case against my client,” she reportedly told the Associated Press.
Breitbart Texas’ calls to Ms. Garza were not immediately returned.
Salinas Complaint by BreitbartTexas
Follow Kristin Tate on Twitter @KristinBTate
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