A Santa Monica man who admitted hacking the website of a Democratic congressional candidate in 2018 was sentenced Thursday to 200 hours of community service and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine.
Arthur Dam, 35, who pleaded guilty in October to a federal count of damaging a protected computer, was also placed on three years' probation, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Dam admitted coordinating cyberattacks against Bryan Caforio, the Democratic challenger to eventual Rep. Katie Hill in the months leading up to the 2018 congressional primary. Dam's wife worked as a fundraiser for Hill.
Hill won the race for California's 25th District, but later resigned from office after nude photos of her were published on a conservative blog and allegations surfaced of an inappropriate relationship with a staff member.
Dam conducted distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Caforio in which the then-politician's website was overloaded with traffic, causing it to crash and go offline.
Dam staged four cyberattacks in April and May of 2018 that took down Caforio's campaign website for 21 hours. Caforio reported spending $27,000 to $30,000 to respond to the attacks, and believes the attacks contributed to his loss in the primary election in June 2018.
Prosecutors said the attacks were traced to Dam's Amazon Web Services account, which he logged into at the time of the attacks.
"The victim reported suffering losses, including website downtime, a reduction in campaign donations, and time spent by campaign staff and others conducting critical incident response," according to the criminal complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court.
California's 25th District includes parts of northern Los Angeles County and extends into Ventura County.
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