SiliconBeat

It took several months for Jason Calacanis to realize the brilliant coder he hired last fall was a felon.
In a blog post on Thursday, Calacanis explained why he chose to stand by John Schiefer and accompany him to a federal court on Wednesday, where he was sentenced to four years in prison for running a large botnet network.
“Almost all talented developers push the envelope when they are young,” wrote Calacanis, the founder of Mahalo, a human search engine based in Santa Monica. “Anyone in technology knows this dark, dirty secret.”
In a note on Twitter, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, said Calacanis made the right decision. “Jason, you have my respect for this tough call,” Wales wrote.
A year earlier, Schiefer, a 26-year-old hacker from Los Angeles, had pled guilty to four counts of computer crime for infecting 250,000 computers with malicious code that turned them into zombies controlled by Schiefer and two associates.
According to the FBI, Schiefer used stolen usernames and passwords to purchase items using his victims’ PayPal accounts. He also surreptitiously installed adware on people’s machines, earning about $19,128 in affiliate fees from the adware company.
Schiefer’s case was the first time anyone was charged under the federal wiretap statute for conduct related to botnets.
In a March 2 letter to the court, Mark Jeffrey, Mahalo’s chief technology officer, asked for leniency for Schiefer, who he had hired as a systems engineer. “I promise you, if John could magically erase this part of his life he would,” Jeffrey wrote. “John has been a huge asset to my team,working very long hours and being very effective in his job…He is no longer dangerous.”
In his blog post, Calacanis asked what is the difference between hackers “who put one foot over the line and ones who race past it?”
During his career as a techie, publisher and entrepreneur, Calacanis said he had repeatedly watched people engage in questionable activity.
“When I worked for Sony, I watched folks in the IT department read their bosses’ e-mail,” he wrote. “When the Web emerged, I watched as folks created honey pots to prove they could socially manipulate people into giving away private information. Many of these people went on to marketing firms which do essentially the same things — except them play by the rules.
“At conferences, I see people pop out Wifi sniffer and show me passwords of executives in the room. I’ve heard senior executives recount stories of putting keyboard monitor software on computers in their offices and recording all instant messaging traffic to find out what their employees are up to.”
This doesn’t excuse Schiefer, Calacanis added. “Certainly we have to punish those who’ve committed crimes.”
But when Schiefer gets out of jail, Calacanis wants him to know he has a job waiting for him. “Life is short,” he wrote. “We all make mistakes, and I’m glad we’ve been given the opportunity to work with someone who needs the help and guidance.”

Photo courtesy of Robert Scoble