A 44‑year old IT professional has been sentenced to 7 years and 4 months of prison by an Australian court following the discovery of over 700 intimate photographs and videos of women on his hard drives, reports ABC. Michael Clapsis (pictured) used his skills as a trained network engineer to lure airline passengers into connecting to bogus Wi‑Fi hotspots that he carried with him.
Commsrisk originally covered the story following Clapsis’ indictment last year but the sexual motivation for his crimes was only revealed through his trial at the Perth District Court, which culminated at the end of November. Clapsis used the Wi‑Fi connections to download content from the devices of 17 women. The files he kept showed his victims in various stages of undress or engaged in sexual activities.
A letter to the court from one of the victims described her feelings about Clapsis and his crime.
Thoughts of hatred, disgust and shame have impacted me severely. Even though they were only pictures, they were mine not yours.
Another victim was a policewoman; Clapsis obtained images of her in uniform. She told the court:
The realisation that this information was taken from me has left me exposed and vulnerable.
Clapsis is a married man with three children who earned AUD160,000 (USD106,000) a year from his IT career. However, he was able to secretly compile his inventory of stolen sexual images over a 6‑year period, having set up Wi‑Fi hotspots at multiple Australian airports and during domestic flights. He was caught because vigilant aircraft crew noticed a hotspot that impersonated the official service of the Qantas airline. His lawyer clearly stated the reasons for Clapsis’ secret life as a traveling Wi‑Fi spy.
It was done for sexual voyeurism. It was not done to the financial detriment of his victims or for his financial benefit.
The LinkedIn profile of Clapsis shows him to be #opentowork although a position in the prison laundry is now the best offer he can hope to receive. His profile also says he is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional and that he has received networking qualifications from Cisco and Microsoft.
There is so much crime occurring through networks these days that it can be difficult to decide which crimes to cover on Commsrisk. I wanted to highlight this particular story because it challenges preconceptions about how to tackle crime.
- Not all scams have a financial motive. If we only try to measure success in terms of financial loss averted then we will pay insufficient attention to the significant harm caused by crimes with little or no financial implications for the victim. Many networked crimes are sexual in nature.
- Criminals exploit opportunities created by the public having needs that are not fulfilled by legitimate communications services. Airline passengers may be tired and vulnerable when arriving at an unfamiliar destination but they may also find it difficult to connect to a safe and reliable network without incurring prohibitive costs.
- Even the smallest network can be used to commit serious crimes. The police need to be trained to handle networked crimes because some of these crimes lie beyond the reach of the private sector.
- It may seem that content saved to a mobile phone or laptop is private but hackers keep identifying ingenious ways to steal it.
- A long prison sentence sends a signal that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated by Australian courts. This contrasts sharply with the soft sentencing policies often applied to networked crime worldwide.
