Anonymous Hactivist Refuses To Be FBI Spy. The ‘Crime’ Gets Him 6 Months In Prison.

The US Department of Justice charged 28-year-old Fidel Salinas of Texas and an Anonymous Hactivist, with 44 felony counts of computer fraud and cyber stalking (each count carrying a 10-year maximum prison sentence) in 2014 because he refused to spy on a Mexican drug cartel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The charges were dismissed earlier in February 2015 after Fidel consented to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of computer fraud and abuse. He admitted to scanning Hidalgo County’s local government website for security vulnerabilities in 2012 without authorization. The plea agreement with prosecutors reduced his 440 years probable sentence to six months in prison, beginning February 13, 2015, along with a hefty fine of $10,600.

According to court documents, Fidel said that in May 2013 during a six-hour-long interrogation with the FBI, two agents asked him to gather information on Mexican drug cartels and elected officials that could be accepting bribes from drug lords.

“We think you can help us. You can help us stop some of this corruption and stop the cartels. Think of it like this, you have a superpower, and you should use your superpower to help us help people,” the FBI agents told Fidel.

After he refused, Fidel found himself being charged with dozens of counts through no fewer than four indictments filed in US District Court for the Southern District of Texas. “I think with the first charge they thought I would cop a plea and help them, but I didn’t. I do believe they were upping the charges to put pressure on me, out of spite for not helping them out,” Fidel said.

New York-based technology lawyer Tor Ekeland stepped in and took on his case pro bono in 2014, and helped Fidel iron out the plea deal, trading in the 44-count indictment in exchange for a single misdemeanor charge.

“As soon as they got caught, they folded. The more I looked at this, the more it seemed like an archetypal example of the Department of Justice’s prosecutorial abuse when it comes to computer crime. I feel sorry for all the people that don’t have the support that Fidel had. There are a ton of Fidel Salinas out there that aren’t as lucky,” Ekeland said in November 2014.

“Fundamentally this represents the FBI trying to recruit by indictment. The message was clear: If he had agreed to help them, they would have dropped the charges in a second,” he recently said.

The FBI, however, has flatly denied this account in a statement: Fidel was never asked to conduct any investigative activity on behalf of the government.

A US Department of Justice spokesperson’s statement read: At no point during the case did the defense ever present any testimony or evidence to show that any of the defendant’s hacking attempts had been made at the behest of the government or at the request of any alleged victim.

Fidel has admitted he has no proof of his claims since he had no lawyer present at the time of the questioning and he made no recordings.