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An acclaimed blogger charged in a hacking attack on the Los Angeles Times website is facing off against prosecutors who say he wreaked costly havoc on his former employer, Tribune Media Co., in revenge for being fired.

Matthew Keys, 28, is set to argue to a federal jury in Sacramento, California, when his trial starts Monday that he shouldn’t be charged with felonies because the U.S. can’t prove he caused $5,000 in damage. The government alleges that Keys, far from being a harmless prankster, cost the company more than $2 million, in large part by sending spam messages to a stolen customer list.

Keys, formerly the Web producer for Tribune Media-owned KTXL Fox 40, a Sacramento television station, is charged with providing log-in credentials for a Tribune Media computer server in December 2010 to a member of the hacker group Anonymous, who used the information to make changes to an online version of a Los Angeles Times news story.

Prosecutors say he was trying to get even after he was fired for making a disparaging comment about KTXL, while Keys claims he left the station of his own accord. The L.A. Times, then owned by Tribune Media, is now operated by Tribune Publishing Co. after a spinoff last year.

Keys was a rising star in the evolving field of social media journalism before he came to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 2012, Time magazine cited him as the producer of one of that’s year’s “140 Best Twitter Feeds,” while the Huffington Post anointed him as one of the “50 People in Media” to follow on Facebook.

Reuters Editor

Thomson Reuters Corp.’s news division hired him as a deputy social media editor. But in April 2013, a month after he was charged in connection with the L.A. Times hack, Reuters fired him, citing purported inaccuracies in his reporting on the Boston Marathon bombing.

Initially, Keys was charged only with helping an Anonymous member hack into the website of the Times. Later, prosecutors expanded his indictment to include the theft of KTXL’s customer e-mail list. Prosecutors say Keys sent e-mails denigrating the station to hundreds of people on the list.

Keys’s attorneys won a ruling Friday from U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller that bars the prosecution from introducing a report that estimated the damage caused to the station by the spamming at $929,977.

The defense contends the L.A. Times website attack resulted in no financial loss because system administrators discovered the hack within an hour and restored the story to its original state from a backup.

Technology Improvements

Prosecutors said in a court filing that witnesses will testify that Tribune Media spent $1.5 million on technology improvements in response to the attack.

Under federal law, the crimes Keys is accused of are only misdemeanors if the total losses were less than $5,000. If the amount is more, the offenses are felonies and Keys, if convicted, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a $750,000 fine.

Previously, Keys’s lawyers were unable to persuade the judge to bar prosecutors from using statements given by the defendant when the FBI raided his home in New Jersey in 2012. Keys said he couldn’t have voluntarily waived his constitutional right against self-incrimination because he had taken two Trazodone antidepressants several hours before the FBI raid.

‘Sophisticated Journalist’

Mueller ruled that he was a “sophisticated journalist” who knowingly waived his right to be questioned without a lawyer present. She also noted that, according to the transcript of his statements, he offered to cooperate with the FBI “if that would help him avoid publicity.”

The government says Keys admitted to the FBI that he helped Anonymous hack into the Times computer servers and spammed KTXL viewers. In court, Keys has offered no such admissions and pleaded not guilty to three counts of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The case is U.S. v. Keys, 13-cr-00082, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California (Sacramento).