Internet Safety News
Teens' Net-Based Crimes
by Anne Collier
A U.S. high school student allegedly made about $1 million in a fraudulent Internet investment scheme, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced in January. Seventeen-year-old Cole Bartiromo, who lives with his parents in Mission Viejo, California, "defrauded 1,000 investors through a web site and Internet bulletin board that promised guaranteed and risk-free investments," Reuters reported.1 The SEC announcement said he had settled the case, agreeing to turn over about $900,000 of investor money he had transferred into an account he had at a Costa Rican casino.
Another case involving a teenager was in the news in January. When he was 15, Norwegian Jon Johansen, now 18, wrote the DeCSS computer program, "designed to defeat an encryption-based copy protection system" that is used to protect copyrighted films on DVDs. The Washington Post's Newsbytes.com2 reports that Jon has been charged "under Norwegian Criminal Code Section 145(2), which makes it a crime to break into another person's locked property to gain access to data one is not allowed access to."
1"Teen Made $1 Million in
Internet Investment Scheme." Reuters. January
7, 2002, www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/tech/081913.htm.
2Michael Bartlett. "Norwegian Authorities
Charge Teen DVD Software Author." The Washington Post.
January 10, 2002, www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173567.html.
Anne Collier is editor of the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter and president of NetFamilyNews.org, a nonprofit news service for parents and teachers of online kids.
