Currently, Kevin D., a young Fleming, has been imprisoned in Milan for several months. The reason? The hacker was denounced internationally after hacking the American Airlines system in 2017, explain our colleagues from the HLN.
He was unmasked after he managed to put ten business class tickets in his name without paying anything. Estimated cost of diversion: $112,000. Kevin D. did not use any of these tickets. As for the damages suffered by the company, American Airlines estimated that they amounted to $203,138.76 in costs.
At the time of the discovery of the hack, American justice asked Belgium to extradite Kevin D. But fortunately for him, Belgium does not send its citizens to foreign justice. It was while traveling that Kevin D. was then arrested, in Italy. He had received a gift allowing him to attend a football match in Italy, but the young hacker had no idea that, the next morning, the police would take him away when he arrived in Italy.
For ten months, he has been languishing in an Italian prison considered to be one of the most frightening. When his parents first visited, Kevin had lost 25 pounds and was covered in rashes. Worried greatly for his son, Alex D., eventually died of a heart attack at age 64. According to the mother of Kevin D., this crisis was probably caused by the concern of not seeing her son alive again, tell our colleagues from the HLN.
Italy, which initially wanted to extradite the young Belgian, finally temporarily froze his shipment to the United States. “We are in contact with fellow Italian lawyers. Through the Administrative Court of Lazio, they recently put a provisional end to this extraditionindicate the Belgian lawyers Frédéric Thiebaut and Sven Mertens, “extradition is provisionally suspended until September 13″, they explain to HLN.
In order to avoid this, Kevin D. will be judged for the facts in Mechelen. His lawyers will defend him on Wednesday before the Flemish court against charges of external hacking and computer fraud. In our country, these charges carry maximum penalties of 5 and 2 years in prison respectively. A bargain compared to what he risks in Texas, 22 years old.