Annoyed sports fan arrested for fake team spam

A US man has been convicted of 79 identity theft and computer hacking charges - and all because his favourite sports team hadn't been doing so well this season.

Allan E Carlson, a passionate follower of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team, had hacked into the PCs of unsuspecting computer users and spoofed the email addresses of local sportswriters and team officials to send emails slamming the management.

The disgruntled Phillies fan sent out thousands of emails from others' mail addresses - but often to email address that were invalid or out of date, leaving the real owners of the inbox bombarded with bounced messages and spam and unable to find their genuine messages in the electronic deluge.

Carlson may have to spend some years in prison, after the judge ruled his actions caused financial harm to two of the area's newspapers.

Carlson is the first person to be convicted under the federal law against identity theft.