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Two Japanese Men Sentenced for Data Theft

TOKYO - Two men were given suspended jail sentences Friday for data theft and stealing personal data on subscribers to Japanese broadband services provider Softbank Corp in an effort to extort money from the company.

Yutaka Tomiyasu, 24, and Takuya Mori, 35, were arrested in May for illegally accessing personal information on Softbank customers after obtaining passwords to hack into the company's database.

The pair passed the information on to four members of a right-wing extremist group, who were arrested in February for allegedly threatening to publicly release the data unless Softbank paid them 1 billion yen (US$9.6 million; euro7.37 million) to 2 billion yen (US$19.2 million; euro14.74 million), police said earlier. The four are on trial separately.

The Tokyo District Court sentenced Tomiyasu to a suspended 2 1/2-year prison term and five years of probation. Mori was given a two-year suspended term with four years of probation, said court spokesman Hideyuki Ito for the data theft.

Judge Hideki Igeta criticized the defendants for causing "social anxiety" and of "base" motives, but said he decided to suspend their jail terms because, "their role was subordinate."

Tokyo-based Softbank, a global investor in Internet businesses, has said the information leaked included addresses, names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers on 4.51 million current and former subscribers. The company said the data did not include passwords, credit card information, bank account numbers or transaction information.

The Yomiuri Shimbun, a major daily, reported that data on as many as 10.6 million customers may have been leaked.

Softbank has issued a public apology for the data leak and promised to strengthen security measures.

Softbank reported its third straight year of losses, marking a group net loss of 107 billion yen (US$948 million; euro790 million) for the fiscal year ended March 2004 due to costs in expanding broadband services.