A 27-year old Los Angeles man was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty last year to infecting as many as 250,000 computers and stealing thousands of peoples identities and hijacking their bank accounts. John Schiefer, who went by the online handle acidstorm, faced up to 60 years in jail. Once in control of the computers, his spybot malware allowed him to intercept computer communications. He mined usernames and passwords on accounts such as PayPal and made purchases totaling thousands of dollars without consent.
Source: https://threatpost.com/botnet-operator-gets-four-year-jail-sentence-030509/72434/