CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An Akron man aligned with the online hacking collective Anonymous was arrested Thursday for launching cyberattacks on websites for the city of Akron and its police department, according to the FBI.

James Robinson, 32, admitted he was responsible for the attacks on the Akron websites akronohio.gov and akroncops.org between Aug. 1 and Aug. 5, as well as for attacks against the U.S. Department of Defense and the Defense Information Systems Agency, the FBI says.

Authorities say the attacks left the websites inaccessible to the public and other users for stretches of time.

A Twitter account named @AkronPhoenix420 took credit for the attacks on the city websites and linked to a video called OpEXPOSED AKRON PD." The video contained an image of someone in a Guy Fawkes mask that said, among other things, that "it's time we teach the law a lesson," "Akron PD abuses the law" and "this week the city of Akron experienced system failures on multiple domains including their emergency TCP ports," the FBI says.

The Guy Fawkes mask is a symbol associated with Anonymous. The tweet taking credit for the Akron attacks also included the hashtags #Anonymous and #TangoDown, the FBI says.

The Twitter account also took credit on April 25 for another attack on Akron's website.

Federal investigators linked Robinson to the Twitter account, according to a news release.

Agents searched his home on Edison Avenue on Thursday. They found a Guy Fawkes mask and a cellphone with a cracked screen similar to one seen in a picture tweeted by @AkronPhoenix420, officials say.

Robinson is charged with one count of knowingly causing the transmission of a program, information, code and command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causing damage to a protected computer.

The attacks the FBI says Robinson launched are referred to as "denial of service" attacks, which overwhelm websites with internet traffic and essentially shuts the websites down.

The FBI says Robinson's Twitter account took credit for many cyberattacks, including several in 2018 that bore similar characteristics to the ones in Akron. Those attacks included websites for the Ohio Department of Public Safety, the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Information Security Agency and the U.S. defense and treasury departments.

Robinson told agents on Wednesday that he wanted to cooperate with investigators in any way he could, according to the affidavit. In addition to saying he was the person behind @AkronPhoenix420 and claiming responsibility for the cyberattacks in Akron, Robinson said he conducted others but could not recall all of them, the FBI says.

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