United States v. Schaffer
586 F.3d 414
In the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Case Number 09-3053
Before Chief Judge Batchelder, Circuit Judge Daughtrey, and District Judge Van Tatenhove
Decided on November 12, 2009

Relevancy of the Case: Appeal for dismissal of charges in a case involving string operation by the FBI to trap the defendants while extracting military secrets from a defence contractor’s network

Statutes and Provisions Involved

• The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030

Relevant Facts of the Case

• The FBI agents portrayed themselves as clients wanting to outsource secret defence secrets from a defence contractor’s computer. This computer contained sensitive information about military secrets and laser missile technology.
• To obtain the information, Schaffer and Arvidson took a hotel room which had a line of access to the purported office. They obtained the employee login information, and then when the employee logged off, they used the intercepted login details to log on to the purported contractor’s network. They also spoofed the employee’s computer so that their computer would appear as the employee’s computer.
• They successfully recovered the required information from the contractor’s system. They stored this information on a hard drive in encrypted form. They provided the decryption key and the hard drive to the clients, i.e., FBI agents, for $110,000.
• After five years since the sting operation, a grand jury indicted Schaffer and Arvidson. The defendant has filed this appeal for dismissal of charges.

Prominent Arguments by the Counsels

• The defendant’s counsel argued that conspiracy in this case was a legal impossibility. The computer accessed during the sting operation was a fake computer containing bogus information. It was a pretend office of a defence contractor.

Opinion of the Bench

• The defendant’s arguments are misplaced. The conspiracy charge involves the agreement to commit the unlawful act, not the act itself.
• The illegality of an agreement does not depend upon achieving its ends. It is irrelevant that it was objectively impossible to commit the substantive offence by the conspirators.

Final Decision

• The court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss the charges.

Anjini Pandey, an undergraduate student at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, prepared this case summary during her internship with The Cyber Blog India in May/June 2022.