JEREMY HAMMOND▊
The other end of the Sabu betrayal. While the FBI's most useful informant was running LulzSec from a monitored keyboard, the man on the other side of the chat was Jeremy Hammond — the AntiSec hacker who broke into the private intelligence firm Stratfor, handed five million emails to WikiLeaks, and uploaded the loot to a server the FBI had quietly provided. He pleaded guilty to a single computer-fraud count and drew the statutory maximum: ten years. The intrusion was real. So was the informant who supplied the target list.
- WHO
- Jeremy Hammond — "Anarchaos," b. Jan 8, 1985, Chicago, Illinois FACT
- SCENE
- Anonymous and the AntiSec movement — the LulzSec-descended intrusion wave (see AntiSec and LulzSec)
- THE DRAMA
- Broke into Stratfor (Dec 2011); five million emails went to WikiLeaks as the "Global Intelligence Files"; the stolen data was uploaded to a server the FBI had furnished through informant Sabu, who logged the operation and helped identify him
- RECORD
- Arrested Mar 5, 2012; pleaded guilty (May 2013) to one count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act; sentenced Nov 15, 2013 to 10 years plus 3 years' supervised release — the statutory maximum. Released 2020 FACT
- STATUS
- SERVED — released Nov 2020; briefly jailed again 2019–20 as a grand-jury resister. The sentence remains widely called disproportionate
This file is not a defense brief; the intrusion happened and he pleaded to it. It is a record of what the government's own machinery looked like from the far side of the chat window. The through-line is the gap between the two halves of the same case: one hacker walked free for cooperating, and the hacker he talked to — on a server the FBI supplied, chasing targets the informant handed him — got ten years. Both facts are in the record. The file keeps both.
the drama timeline
ACT I — THE RADICAL (2003–2010)
A gifted Chicago programmer builds a hacking-education site, does a first federal stint over a political-target hack, and comes out convinced the law is the wrong side to be on.
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2003
HackThisSite
At eighteen Hammond founds HackThisSite, a legal hacking-and-security training platform. He is, by every account including the government's, genuinely talented — a self-taught programmer with a political streak that hardens through the mid-2000s activist scene.
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2005–06
The first prison term
Hammond is convicted for hacking the conservative site Protest Warrior and accessing its credit-card data. He serves roughly eighteen months. He later describes the experience as radicalizing rather than deterrent — the state made an enemy where it wanted a lesson.
ACT II — STRATFOR (DECEMBER 2011)
Under the AntiSec banner he breaks into a private spy shop, empties its mail spool, and ships the archive to WikiLeaks — not knowing the man cheering him on already belonged to the FBI.
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DEC 2011
The breach
Hammond and other AntiSec hackers penetrate Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor), a private intelligence firm. They exfiltrate roughly five million internal emails and a trove of client data, including some 60,000 credit-card numbers used for fraudulent charges — the count the government would foreground. The intrusion is real and unauthorized; Hammond does not dispute it.
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DEC 2011–FEB 2012
The Global Intelligence Files
The stolen Stratfor mail is passed to WikiLeaks, which begins publishing it as the "Global Intelligence Files." For Hammond this is the point — exposing a shadow-intelligence industry selling surveillance of activists to corporate clients. For the prosecution it is aggravated distribution of stolen data.
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DEC 2011
The server Sabu provided
By this point Hector Monsegur ("Sabu") — arrested that summer and turned — is a full FBI cooperator. During the Stratfor operation Sabu supplies a server onto which the stolen data is uploaded, and stays in contact with Hammond throughout, logging the activity. Per Hammond's later allocution, Sabu also fed him lists of additional vulnerable targets, "largely foreign government websites."
ACT III — THE INFORMANT REVEALED (2012–2013)
The FBI closes the trap it has been holding open. Hammond learns the man he trusted had been the government's the whole time.
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MAR 5, 2012
Arrest in Bridgeport
The FBI arrests Hammond at his home in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago. The case against him is built substantially on the cooperation and logs of Sabu — the informant who had encouraged and equipped the very operation now charged.
-
MAY 28, 2013
The guilty plea
Hammond pleads guilty to one count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for the Stratfor intrusion. In a statement he frames the act as civil disobedience: "I did what I believe is right." The plea is unconditional — no entrapment defense is tried.
ACT IV — TEN YEARS (2013–)
The maximum sentence, an allocution that names the informant's role on the record, and a second jailing years later for refusing a grand jury.
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NOV 15, 2013
The maximum
Judge Loretta Preska sentences Hammond to ten years — the statutory maximum under his plea — plus three years' supervised release. In his allocution he states that the foreign intrusions were "all of which were suggested by Sabu while cooperating with the FBI," and closes: "Yes I broke the law, but I believe that sometimes laws must be broken in order to make room for change." Critics across the spectrum call the term grossly disproportionate.
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2019–2020
The grand-jury resister
Near the end of his term, Hammond is subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and held in civil contempt when he refuses. He is finally released from federal custody in November 2020 — having done the full ten and then some, on principle.
both sides, on the record
The prosecution's case: Hammond broke into a private company's systems without authorization, stole millions of emails and tens of thousands of credit-card numbers, and enabled fraudulent charges. He pleaded guilty to a felony under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This was a real intrusion with real victims and real financial harm, and a court imposed the sentence the statute allowed [3].
Not his first: the government points to a prior conviction for a politically motivated hack. By its account Hammond was a repeat, unrepentant offender who treated other people's systems and data as his to take [1].
The government helped build the crime: the informant Sabu supplied the server that received the stolen Stratfor data and, by Hammond's sworn allocution, fed him lists of further targets — "largely foreign government websites" — all while working for the FBI. Hammond and his supporters call this entrapment-adjacent: the state prosecuting an operation its own agent equipped and steered. (No entrapment defense was raised or ruled on) [2].
The motive was political: Hammond framed Stratfor not as theft for gain but as exposure of a private surveillance industry selling intelligence on activists — civil disobedience in his own words, and the reason the emails went to WikiLeaks rather than a carding forum [2].
The punishment outran the pattern: ten years — the statutory maximum — was widely condemned as disproportionate, all the sharper set beside the informant who ran LulzSec for the FBI and served effectively no additional time. Same case, two ends, wildly different outcomes [4].
YOU DECIDE
The intrusion was real and he pleaded to it — that part is not in dispute and is not softened here. But the same record shows the government's informant supplied the server, logged the operation, and handed over the target list, then walked while Hammond took the maximum. Strip the politics from either side and you are left with one uncomfortable fact: the case that put a hacker away for a decade was, in material part, assembled by a hacker the FBI was running.
The archive does not canonize. The archive keeps the plea — and the allocution that named the informant on the record.
evidence locker
PRIMARY / REFERENCE
Wikipedia — Jeremy Hammond ATTRIBUTED — dated timeline: birth, HackThisSite, the Protest Warrior conviction, the Dec 2011 Stratfor breach, Sabu's cooperating role, the March 2012 arrest, the CFAA plea, the 10-year sentence, the grand-jury contempt, and the 2020 release.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond The Sparrow Project — Jeremy Hammond's Sentencing Statement FIRST-PARTY — his full allocution: the "laws must be broken" line, and his account that the further intrusions were "all of which were suggested by Sabu while cooperating with the FBI."
sparrowmedia.net/2013/11/jeremy-hammond-sentence/
CONTEXT & CROSS-LINKS
WikiLeaks — The Global Intelligence Files PRIMARY ARCHIVE — the published Stratfor email trove at the center of the case.
wikileaks.org/gifiles/
The standard. Jeremy Hammond is a public figure; the intrusion, the guilty plea, and the ten-year sentence are matters of public record and are stated here as fact. The prosecution's case is given at full strength: a real, unauthorized intrusion with real financial harm. His side is given at equal strength: political motivation, a sentence widely called disproportionate, and the documented role of an FBI informant who supplied the server and the target list. The "entrapment" characterization is presented as his and his supporters' argument, not a legal finding — no entrapment defense was raised or ruled on. If a line here couldn't survive scrutiny, it wouldn't be on the page.