Jul 09, 2013 09:58 AM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Brett Hudson, one of the two Ohio men who conspired to threaten the University of Pittsburgh officials, was sentenced to three months in community confinement center, three months of home confinement and two years of probation by U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti, Monday July 8.

Conti said that the sentence was awarded based on the recommendations from the prosecutors. According to federal sentencing guidelines, Conti should have imposed an 18-month jail term on Hudson, even though he had no prior criminal record.

The second accused in the case, Alexander Waterland, of Loveland, Ohio, has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison.

Hudson, 27, and Waterland, 25, employed computer programs to access confidential information on the university students and faculty from Pitt's website in April 2012. Through anonymous YouTube and Twitter posts, they threatened to publish the acquired data unless the university's chancellor apologized for not protecting student personal information

Both the men claimed to be a part of the Anonymous computer hacking network.

The FBI said that the threats were deemed as extortion because they demanded an apology from the school for not safeguarding their private information.

The confidential information which the men claimed to have obtained from the university's website turned out to be bogus as the authorities confirmed to the investigators that these men never obtained any private data.

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