Palin hacker faces up to 20 years in prison

Posted by Joe on March 11th, 2009

New felony charges against David Kernell, the Tennessee college student who allegedly accessed Sarah Palin's personal Yahoo email account and posted personal emails publicly on the Internet, could lead to significant jail time and fines if convicted.

The 21-year-old Kernell, who is also the son of Democratic Representative Mike Kernall, was originally charged with one felony count of illegally accessing a public computer. Three addition charges have been added including:

• One count of identity theft for allegedly impersonating Palin
• One count of obstruction of justice for destroying evidence of his alleged "hack"
• One count of wire fraud for posting Palin's information on a publically available website

All of these new charges are felonies and carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years, up to $250,000 in fines and five years of supervised release if convicted.

Kernell's trial is set to begin on October 27, 2009.

Read our previous post on the Palin email hack case to learn how to protect your own personal email accounts.

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