BY BENJAMIN KABAK

In print | Published January 27, 2005

Three years ago, Swarthmore students were deluged with e-mails seemingly from regional sports personalities criticizing the Philadelphia Phillies.

Two weeks ago, Allan E. Carlson, a southern New Jersey native, was convicted in a U.S. District Court of identify theft, fraud, and computer hacking – related offenses, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Carlson, who was described as a fanatical follower of the Phillies, was found guilty on all 79 counts and could face up to 41 months in jail with no parole under the federal sentencing guidelines. Judge Berle M. Schiller has yet to schedule a sentencing.

Approximately three years ago, after the 2001 baseball season, residents in the Philadelphia area began receiving e-mails that appeared as though they were from writers at The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and the Phillies management.

These e-mails bashed the team for trading away its superstars Curt Schilling and Scott Rolen while getting little in return.

During the one-year span in which Carlson sent out e-mails from falsified addresses, the Philadelphia newspapers were aversely affected by the scam.

The Inquirer’s then-Deputy Managing Editor for Operations Sandra H. Long explained how the e-mails were becoming more than just a nuisance.

“Not only are these acts of criminal mischief causing people like you to think badly of us, they are also jamming our system and hindering our operations,” Long said in a statement in a March 21, 2001, article in The Phoenix.

In court, Michael L. Levy, assistant U.S. attorney, said that Carlson’s impersonations and rants had cost news organizations approximately $25,000 in efforts to find legitimate e-mails among the thousands of replies to Carlson’s rants.

According to The Inquirer, Carlson was unaware that he was committing a crime or that his actions would harm the newspapers’ computer networks.

Carlson, who has lived in the Los Angeles area for 20 years, has faced legal sanctions in the past. Ten years ago, he was ordered to stop putting white supremacist literature into supermarket magazines, and in 1996, he spent 32 months in fall for vandalizing cars in California, according to The Inquirer.

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