3 May – LAWFUEL – The Law News Network – The United States Attorney for the Northern District of California announced that a New York man pleaded guilty today to two counts of transmitting threatening interstate communications to two eBay officials.
The case was scheduled for jury trial and the plea agreement was accepted before the jury was selected. In the plea agreement, defendant Florin Horicianu admitted that on May 28, 2004, he transmitted two e-mail messages from the Easy Internet Café in New York City to servers at eBay, located in San Jose, California. The e-mail messages to eBay’s Chief Executive Officer and President, and eBay’s Founder and Chairman of the Board stated in part that he would haunt and hurt them and their families and that he would locate them anywhere. The plea agreement also acknowledged certain sentencing enhancements, including that more than two threats were made to two individuals, and that these communications were in violation of a previously entered state court injunction, which was entered by the Santa Clara Superior Court in May 2003.
Defendant Horicianu is scheduled to be sentenced before United States District Judge James Ware in San Jose, California on September 19, 2005 at 1:30 p.m.
The prosecution is the result of a joint investigation by the U.S. Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The investigation was overseen by the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) Unit of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. Mark L. Krotoski and H.H. (Shashi) Kewalramani are the Assistant U.S. Attorneys from the CHIP Unit who prosecuted the case, and were assisted by Legal Assistants Mimi Lam and Lauri Gomez.
A copy of this press release may be found on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s website at www.usdoj.gov/usao/can . Related court documents and information may be found on the District Court website at www.cand.uscourts.gov or on
All press inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s Office should be directed to Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher P. Sonderby, Chief of the CHIP Unit, at (408) 535-5037, or Luke Macaulay at (415) 436-6757 or by email at Luke.Macaulay3@usdoj.gov.
