Reed nonetheless expressed hope that the judge will mitigate the sentence in consideration of earlier comments from one of Gray's victims to InternetNews that he was grateful to the hacker for pointing out vulnerabilities. Even an expert witness on the case for the Crown Court prosecution, Neil Barrett, expressed surprise that Gray appears headed to jail. I've seen people who've done phenomenally worse things in computer crime get off with a caution. Mr Gray is immature and wasn't doing it out of malice but out of a misplaced sense of fun. But Matt Yarbrough, a former US computer crime prosecutor, said Gray's justification for his crime is hollow.
Hackers do what they do because of power.
When they get on the Internet, they are gods. Indeed, prior to his arrest, Curador boasted that he had obtained the credit card number of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates from one of his victim sites. However, the card number was missing four digits and did not match any algorithms used by major credit card companies. Yarbrough said the court might consider, as part of its sentence, that Gray not be allowed to use computers for up to five years. To these guys, that's more devastating than a year in jail.