Man arrested for allegedly extorting Google

A California man has been charged with extortion, after allegedly making demands for $100,000 from search giant Google.

According to court papers, he claimed that if Google did not pay, he would release a piece of software to spammers that would generate fake advertising hits, costing the search giant millions.

The man, Michael Bradley, was so sure that the folks at Google would pay up, he even turned up at their offices for a meeting to sell his software. By then, federal law enforcement agents were already on the case and videotaped the alleged extortion attempt.

The software Bradley designed would have flooded the Google advertisements with fake clicks, potentially costing the company millions of dollars. Google pays Web publishers a fee for each click on the pop-ups the site generates. He threatened to give the software to the top 100 spammers in the meeting with Google's officials, court papers released on Friday show.

According to the papers, he also offered his services as a consultant engineer to help the search engine stop other advertising fraud.

After he didn't hear back from the search engine staff about a payment, he allegedly sent an e-mail saying he would release the software to the public--and the spammers--the following week. He was then met by someone whom he likely expected to be a Google executive clutching a big bag of money but who turned out to be a federal agent with an arrest warrant.

Bradley was released on $50,000 bail, on the condition that he has no contact with his computer or Google.

Jo Best of Silicon.com reported from London.

[FutureMedia]

What An Idiot. Not how to get the job.

For somebody looking for a job, he sure took the wrong
approach. Without the extortion, he probably would have been
hired. All he needed to do was to tell them he had discovered a
security flaw and they would have been happy to hire him to
show them how to fix it. Duh!

Should have arranged with friend to implement if anything happened to him!

Bad planning -- he should have arranged with a friend to proceed with releasing the software if the friend failed to contact him later or if anything happened to him (such as arrest). I am sure next time such a software creator will cover this hole and as such, an arrest will cause the release of software making those responsible for the arrest think twice next time as to how wise it was to do so.

[ittyspam]

Google should sue... CNET

Google should sue CNET for libel for this story, for printing that Google uses "pop up ads" on any of their pages.

CNET, due some research before hitting that "submit" button, would you?

[GoogleGuy]

Dont believe everything you read

It didnt go down that way. Sure software was created as a proof of concept for google. After, and I repeat after, google asked for proof of concept for thier flaws.

I spent 1 night in jail, and plead not guilty, and after 3 years, they still didnt want to go to trial? It was a huge mis-understanding on both sides.

Yea this was me.