Ex-South Bay Man Charged In County Website Attack Caught: Feds

SAN JOSE, CA — A former Mountain View resident appeared in court Tuesday, a decade after he allegedly attacked Santa Cruz County's website amid protests on street camping regulations in the city of Santa Cruz, federal prosecutors announced.

Christopher Doyon, 56, had since moved to Mexico City and was arrested Friday by Mexican immigration officials, according to a statement from the Department of Justice U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of California. Doyon was deported to the United States on Saturday and arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Doyon's court appearance Tuesday was related to a charge of failure to appear that came after he skipped out on a 2012 court proceeding. That court proceeding came after he was placed on pretrial release for his alleged role in the attack on Santa Cruz County's website.

Doyon has not entered a plea in that case, said his attorney Jay Leiderman. He is facing charges of conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer and aiding and abetting intentional damage to a protected computer.

Leiderman told Patch that it's too early to say much about his client's case, but said Doyon had a form of asylum in Mexico and said there may have been some issues with the way the country handled his case.

Doyon is accused of playing a role in a distributed denial of service attack on Santa Cruz County's computer servers in 2010 that caused the website to go offline, prosecutors said. Such attacks seek to deny users access to a website by flooding it with illegitimate users.

The attack was organized by the People's Liberation Front, a group of so-called hacktivists that coordinate hacking campaigns for a political or social purpose, according to prosecutors. Doyon was known as "Commander X" or "Commander Adama," prosecutors wrote. The group has ties to well-known group Anonymous, protesters wrote.

The attack came on the heels of the city of Santa Cruz's decision to pass restrictions on street camping, prompting a series of protests from July to October 2010, protesters wrote. The Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office eventually broke up the protest and charged several people with misdemeanors — hence the decision to target the county website, according to prosecutors.

Doyon faces up to two years behind bars, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release for his failure to appear charge.

He could face 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine plus restitution and three years of supervised release for his aiding and abetting charge. A charge of conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer comes with up to five years in prison, $250,000 fine plus restitution and up to three years of supervised release.