A former Internal Revenue Service employee this week got 105 months in prison for pleading guilty to theft of government property and aggravated identity theft in a case where the guy tried to get away with nearly $8 million in fraudulent tax returns.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice teamed up for a coast-to-coast crackdown on identity thieves this week.

Following last week's Backspin, reader Alex Gonzales (Sweetwater, Texas) wrote to me: "Just read your SOPA article and I guess I'm just not seeing the big picture. If the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) could put an end to online piracy and stop a lot of those damn viruses, maybe even stop hackers -- what's bad about that? You say bad for business, bad for Internet -- but how? How is stopping/policing the bad stuff on the Internet bad? Give me some real reasons as to why [SOPA/PIPA] is bad. And don't tell me to go read the SOPA/PIPA bills in their entirety."

NBN Co chief executive, Mike Quigley, has apologised for mistakenly misleading the public about his previous responsibilities at communications firm Alcatel-Lucent.

NBN Co chief, Mike Quigley, has been forced to issue a statement regarding the bribery case by US authorities against Alcatel-Lucent, following reports of discrepancies between his public statements about his former employer and US court documents.

Heartland Payment Systems has made a third settlement deal, this time with MasterCard, related to a massive data breach two years ago at the card payments processor.

The U.S. Department of Justice won't challenge Cisco Systems' US$3 billion acquisition of video-conferencing service provider Tandberg, the agency announced Monday.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission on Thursday both unconditionally approved Microsoft and Yahoo's plan to work together in the field of Internet search.