Man Charged With Using Open WiFi To Send Death Threats To VP Biden

from the but-look,-they-figured-it-out! dept

For years and years, we've heard that one of the evil things about open WiFi is that someone could connect to it, do something bad, and then get away totally free, since there would be no way to trace him. Of course, as we pointed out at the time, that assumes that whatever evil things they do won't be traceable via other means. In fact, as we've noted, good old fashioned detective work can often catch those folks. It looks like we've got another case of that happening. Reader btr1701 points us to the news of a guy who jumped on his neighbor's open WiFi to send a death threat to Vice President Joe Biden. The threat read:

This is a terrorist threat! Take this seriously. I hate the way you people are spending money you don't have ... I'm assigning myself to be judge, jury and executioner. Since you folks have spent what you don't have, it's time to pay the ultimate price

Creative. Apparently, the guy who did this, one Barry Ardolf, was trying to frame his neighbor. Around the same time, he apparently also sent child pornography to his neighbor's co-workers, using a fake email address pretending to be the neighbor. If the "open WiFi" haters were correct, he would have been able to do this without any way to catch him. But, of course, that's ridiculous. With a little effort, the FBI was able to trace the origin right back to Ardolf -- and he's now been arrested for threats to the VP and for identity fraud.

Filed Under: biden, identity fraud, open wifi, threats