A Los Angeles man has admitted to infecting over 250,000 computers, and stealing identities of thousands of people by wire-tapping their communications and accessing their bank accounts.

John Kenneth Schiefer (26) has pleaded guilty to four felonies; namely, accessing protected computers to conduct fraud, disclosing illegally intercepted electronic communications, wire fraud, and bank fraud. Which, is likely to get him up to 60 years in federal prison plus a $1.75 million fine.

Details of the case reveal that Schiefer led a double identity; an information security consultant by day, who metamorphosed into a 'Botmaster' by night.

He and an unspecified number of co-hackers, going by names such as 'revolt', 'Harr0', 'butthead', 'prime', and 'dynamic', carried out 'botnet attacks', installing malicious code to act as wire-tap on compromised computers, and intercepting messages to PayPal and other such Web sites. Usernames and passwords were retrieved, and deployed, to access an unknown number of bank accounts.

All said, the plea marks a significant break-through in an investigation involving the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) that began in 2005.

Meanwhile, a bot is a program that surreptitiously installs itself on a computer so that a hacker can control it. And, a botnet is a network of such computers which can harness collective powers to wreak havoc.