Syrian Hacker Who Worked for Assad's Regime and Triggered a $136 Billion Stock Drop Is Sentenced to 42 Months in Federal Prison

A Syrian hacker tied to the Assad government has been sentenced in a U.S. federal court, the Daily Caller reports, citing a Justice Department release from Thursday.

The sentence. Ahmad Umar Agha, who also used the handle Th3Pr0, received 42 months in prison for a hacking conspiracy aimed at roughly 47 Western organizations, including U.S. government agencies and media outlets. The Justice Department says he spent more than a decade as a fugitive.

What he did. Prosecutors say Agha tried several times to get into the White House's social media page and broke into the Associated Press's Twitter account to post that then-President Obama had been hurt in White House explosions. That false post briefly wiped about $136 billion off U.S. stock values. He also got into the company that hosts the Marine Corps recruiting website and sent visitors to a page urging Marines to refuse orders and fight for the Syrian Army.

The statements. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said Agha used his skills "to silence reporting on the regime's atrocities, intimidate its opponents, and incite U.S. servicemembers to refuse their orders," and called the case a reminder of the division's "long memory." First Assistant U.S. Attorney Theophani Stamos of the Eastern District of Virginia said protecting electronic infrastructure and financial markets is "of paramount importance."

Note for readers: the Daily Caller says the Justice Department did not immediately respond to its request for comment, and the account of what Agha did comes from the department's release. We did not see a statement from his lawyers.