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Former Atlanta mayor Bill Campbell sentenced to over two years in prison for tax evasionZ
Former Atlanta mayor Bill Campbell was sentenced to 2 1/2 years imprisonment Tuesday for three tax evasion charges on which he was convicted. (Right) Prosecutor Sally Yates (Right Below) GDO Report
Judge Richard Story of the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia [official website] also ordered Campbell to pay $62,823 in unpaid taxes and $6,300 in fines. Campbell, who served as mayor from 1994 to 2002, was charged [DOJ indictment summary, PDF] in 2004 with taking bribes of more than $160,000 in exchange for city contracts during his administration. A jury acquitted him, however, of federal bribery and racketeering charges, prompting his attorneys to attack the tax evasion charges as an end-run around the other verdicts. Campbell, who faced imprisonment up to nine years, was the focus of a seven-year investigation by the US Attorney's Office in Atlanta [official website] that resulted in convictions of 10 other city officials. UPDATE: Just a day after Microsoft released patches for vulnerabilities in some of its software, code designed to take advantage of those weaknesses appeared on the Internet. Most of the patches that Microsoft issued were for flaws that were widely known. But at least two flaws were made public for the first time on Tuesday as part of the company's monthly security update. Security firms reported finding the code in Wednesday. The exploit code for previously unknown flaws means hackers could use the code to pounce on computer systems where managers are slow to apply patches. "Microsoft is aware that detailed exploit code was published on the Internet for some of the vulnerabilities," the software maker said in a statement. "With the exception of MS06-027 (the Word malware that began circulating last month), Microsoft is not currently aware of any active attacks utilizing this exploit code...the exploit code does not affect users who have installed all June security updates." In all, Microsoft issued patches for 21 flaws in its security update, saying all but two of them could let an intruder run malicious code on a compromised computer. Some of the exploits that appear on the Web are for "critical" flaws in Windows Media Player and for "routing and remote access." The SANS Internet Storm Center reported that two exploits were for the "routing and remote access." Verisign's iDefense team also announced that it had developed a "proof of concept" exploit code for a security hole in the ".ART" file, a file type used often for AOL services and Web sites, according to iDefense. Microsoft recently warned of eight ‘critical’ security flaws in its Windows OS and Office software that could allow attackers to take control of a computer. Microsoft, whose Windows OS runs on 90 per cent of the world’s computers, issued patches to fix the problems as part of its monthly security bulletin. It was the biggest such update since February 2005. The company issued a total of 12 patches that address 21 security holes and covers problems in its Windows, Internet Explorer, Word, Powerpoint and Exchange Server products, security experts said. The world’s biggest software maker defines a flaw as ‘critical’ when the vulnerability could allow a damaging Internet worm to replicate without the user doing anything to the machine. Six of the critical flaws related to Windows and two affected Office. Microsoft also issued another two security warnings it rated at its second-highest level of ‘important’ for Windows. |
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