Man arrested for allegedly extorting Google

Last modified: March 22, 2004, 8:50 AM PST
& }  S" X9 j  }. o/ D+ hBy Jo Best
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. q  Q: Z# @6 Y- ^& q* e  fA California man has been charged with extortion, after allegedly making demands for $100,000 from search giant Google.
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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.

: H+ J' y. ?- LThe 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.
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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.
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  b6 {+ Q! l6 T2 @1 [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.
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Bradley was released on $50,000 bail, on the condition that he has no contact with his computer or Google.
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Jo Best of Silicon.com reported from London.


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