“The Government respectfully submits this letter,” wrote US Attorney Preet Bharara to District Judge Loretta Preska on August 21, “to request a six-month adjournment of the August 22, 2012 sentencing control data set in the above-captioned matter in light of the defendant’s ongoing cooperation with the Government.” The letter, made available by Wired, is stamped by Judge Preska, “The sentencing is adjourned to February 22, 2013 at 10:00 am.”
What that ‘ongoing cooperation’ might be is not indicated. Nor yet do we know his ‘reward’ for that co-operation might be. “It is not clear what the US Attorney's Office will recommend at Monsegur's sentencing,” writes Paul Roberts on the Sophos blog. “He has pleaded guilty to 12 criminal charges and could face 124 years in prison should he receive the maximum allowed sentence for each charge.”
LulzSec, a hacking group loosely connected to Anonymous, flamed brightly but briefly last year. It “rampaged across the internet in 2011, in a 50-day series of attacks on news organizations, government websites and corporations. The hacking spree was accompanied by a lively Twitter feed and clever, taunting public pronouncements,” writes Wired. But it was brought down when Sabu was ‘turned’ by the FBI supposedly in fear of losing his family.
Sabu’s co-operation led to the arrest of or additional charges against his fellow LulzSec members, including Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis, Darren Martyn and Donncha O’Cearrbhail, and AntiSec member Jeremy Hammond.