Before he was charged in July 2011 with aiding the hacker group Anonymous, Josh Covelli lived what he considered the life of an ordinary 26-year-old. He spent countless hours on the Internet. He had a girlfriend. He was a student and employee at Devry University in Dayton, Ohio.
But after federal authorities accused him and 13 other people of helping launch a cyberattack against the online payment service PayPal, Covelli faced potentially 15 years in prison, and his life began to unravel.
His girlfriend broke up with him. He struggled to find an employer willing to hire an accused computer hacker. His friends "wanted nothing to do with me," he said, and he suffered from bouts of paranoia -- "looking out windows, not sure who to trust" -- before checking into a behavioral health center for three days.
"It was as if I got kicked off a cliff," Covelli, now 28, told The Huffington Post in an interview. READ More...
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