ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Federal prosecutors are announcing what they say is the first-ever criminal conviction involving the sale of an eavesdropping tool for cellphones.
Hammad Akbar, the CEO of a company that sold the StealthGenie cellphone spyware app, pleaded guilty Tuesday to selling and advertising an interception device. He avoided prison time and was ordered to pay a $500,000 fine.
Prosecutors say StealthGenie could be secretly installed on smart phones. That allowed all their calls, texts and other communications to be remotely monitored.
The 31-year-old Akbar, of Lahore, Pakistan, was arrested in September in Los Angeles and prosecuted in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia. StealthGenie was hosted from a data center in Ashburn, Virginia. The case was investigated by the FBI's Washington Field Office.
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