Minnesota Wi-Fi hacker gets 18 years in prison

Keep in mind as you read this story that the hacker rejected a plea deal for two years from the Federal Prosecutor.


Minnesota hacker Barry Ardolf was sentenced to an 18-year term in a federal prison this Tuesday. Ardolf had terrorized a neighboring family for two years through a carefully planned campaign involving a hijacked Wi-Fi network to harass, frame and embarrass the next-door neighbors in every facet of their lives.

Ardolf's obsessive passive-aggression was apparently ignited in late 2008 when his neighbors, Matt and Bethany Kostolnik, filed a police report against him. The Kostolniks had a 4-year old son who wandered over to their next-door-neighbors property shortly after moving into the Minnesota suburb of Blaine. Ardolf, 46 and a father of two, had reportedly picked the boy up carried him back to the couple and then kissed the child on the lips. Ardolf was offended when the cops were called and vowed his revenge like every good villain.

The man, a Medtronic computer technician, downloaded a Wi-Fi hacking program to tear into his neighbors WEP encryption. Ardolf created a fake Myspace page as well as several fake emails for Matt Kostolnik. The hacker then posted child porn on the Myspace page and emailed the same child porn to co-workers at Kostolnik's law office.

To top it all off, the Blaine hacker sent death threats to Vice President Joe Biden and other politicians from Kostolnik's Yahoo account. This granted Kostolnik a visit from the secret service who had traced the emails back to his IP address. One of the emails told Biden, "I swear to God I'm going to kill you!"

Ardolf's mischief was detected when a frustrated Kostolnik told bosses he had no clue as to what was going on. The law office hired a firm to poke around the Wi-Fi network and install a packet sniffer to figure it all out. Eventually Ardolf's name and Comcast account were found which gave the FBI a reason to obtain a search warrant for Ardolf's house. They found massive evidence that led to the Blaine hacker being slapped with charges for identity theft, making threats against Biden, possession of child pornography as well as distribution of kiddie-porn.

The FBI also found evidence that Ardolf had staged a similar attack against in a family in Brooklyn Park for parking their cars in front of his house. Ardolf's charges will tag him with lifetime-sex-offender registration requirements and after his release he'll be supervised for 20 years. According to the Pioneer Press, he'll also be restricted when working with computers by his parole officers. The man may have been a nightmare to live next to, but is the 18 years in prison a bit overkill?

Serves him right

Agreed, this is just sick.

He got what he deserved! What kind of pervo fadouche kissing someone's kid on the mouth. He's lucky these were wimpy yuppies who called the police. In my world that warrants a boot to the thyroid.

There was another case where a guy felling in love with his co-worker and broke into her house and downloaded kiddie porn to her husband's computer to get his arrested and out of the picture.

These passive aggressive wimpy guys are a result of the pussification of the American male. These are the type of people who kill themselves because someone talked about them on Facebook!

I think the problem was the kiddie fiddling and KP, as well as making death threats, rather than the wifi hacking... Sounds like he deserved what he got. If you make death threats against senior politicos in the US, you're lucky if they don't ship you off to Gitmo.

Okay, so I'm probably in the minority in thinking that someone can kill a man and get less jail time, so yeah, I think 18 years is ridiculous. What he did was deplorable, but 18 years? Really? You can rape a woman and get less time than that, much less. You want to give him 5 years plus 5 probation that would have made more sense. 18 years is punishment that does not fit the crime, in my opinion.

Sounds like he deserved it.

And to think how much money he could have made with the hundreds of hours he spent using those skills...what a d-bag.

BUT 18 years is a bit long considering people do less time for murder.

I think the 18 years is appropriate. He completely ruined this guys life at the time. People like this are sickos and probably will never change. If they gave him 2 years he'd probably get out and do the same thing or something similar.

I think 18 years is a bit of a overkill. He should have just taken the reduced sentence.

GarrettWinthrop said:

Okay, so I'm probably in the minority in thinking that someone can kill a man and get less jail time, so yeah, I think 18 years is ridiculous. What he did was deplorable, but 18 years? Really? You can rape a woman and get less time than that, much less. You want to give him 5 years plus 5 probation that would have made more sense. 18 years is punishment that does not fit the crime, in my opinion.

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If I was either of those families he tormented, I'd be freaking out when the 5 short years was up... The guy is obviously an obsessive compulsive freak with a penchant for revenge.

The sentence does seem high, but this is one of those cases where the dude basically has to be locked up for the good of society. Just because it's a non-violent crime, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have the potential to be enormously damaging to the victims.

Imagine what could have happened if the father of the other family had got mistakenly locked up for kiddie porn? The lives of his wife and kids would have been completely ruined.

However where the US justice system really fails in cases like this is that I'm sure the guy is just going to be locked up in gen pop, when what he really needs is serious mental health care.

krazy story indeed

Wow, last time I piss off a nerd... That is some scary stuff for the victim. By the time Ardolf gets out of prison, he'll be an internet noob..

did this idiot really think he wasn't going to get caught? i mean, the victim's wifi network probably extended up to a one-house radius from his house...the list of suspects would have included probably about 5 people, and the fact that he had an altercation with the victim AND is a computer tech...yeah.

omg what that guy is so sick, his mind is full with dead bugs i guess lol, but that ardolf must be sick or something because a normal man wouldn't do such a thing, in my opinion.

That's just sick.
Hope he drops the soap!
/Izerman

I think 18 years is fair, but the trouble is he will get out in 3-5 years that's the problem. They will let him out early like they almost always do for crimes of this type.

:scool: BURN IN HELL :scool:

He deservs, what he got!

:1:

me too, I use 2 connection hacked... but I am stealth

What he did was a bit overkill, but the sentence is way fucking overkill. You all know how much tax dollars it costs to house an inmate per year? Those dollars could be better spent finding the murderers and real sex offenders.

With a name like Ardolf he deserved it.