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That's a fancy pants, wise guy argument :-) that under our existing laws, TM doesn't do anything illegal, while random douchenozzles who hire Bulgarian hackers to game the TM online system and crowd out you and me with their automated bots, well, the fed's theory is that what the "wiseguys" did was illegal, to wit, "wire fraud", "hacking into protected computer systems" etc.
I hope for all of our sake, the feds are right and that Mr. Lowson at a minimum will be facing at least a few years in federal prison.
Also, I'm more hopeful than many that there won't be a million wannabee slimeballs to take their place. The prospect of prison should cool a lot of jets. And these guys had mad technical skillz....read the indictment , it's incredible...."the perfect crime", like the scam in "Office Space"...they knew they were on TM's radar screen, but their biggest worry was that TM would figure out that they weren't these small time scalpers but actually pwn3d TM's entire network, lock, stock and barrel.
I'm not seeing a lot of people with the skills and brass balls needed to follow in Lowson's footsteps if he goes away.