February 28, 1997, Visto, Italy: Thanks from Bill Clinton for the Internet Sheriff

Per lo sceriffo di Internet un grazie da Bill Clinton
Thanks from Bill Clinton for the Internet Sheriff

By Alessia Da Canal

Venice. Meeting with the expert, who with his investigations, allowed the FBI to discover a group of frauds on the Internet.

“I thought that the e-mail message was a joke, but instead it really was a compliment from the White House!” tells Roberto Capodieci. The story of a computer wizard who uses his mouse in the name of the law.

The Internet sheriff. Roberto Capodieci likes mostly to be considered a sort of law tutor inside a land without frontiers that is the Internet, the network connecting millions of computers in every part of the planet. Discovering a great international fraud and pointing out to the FBI something like the 0115xxxxxx phone number fraud, to which many unaware navigators were connected, the young man from Mestre obtained special thanks which arrived at his supercomputer from the USA through e-mail: “Well done! Mr. Capodieci, thank you for your initiative and your collaboration. Yours sincerely, Bill”.

This message arrived right from the White House, and that Bill is really Clinton, the President who wanted to personally thank this computer wizard for his initiative and his collaboration. “In the beginning I thought it was a joke,” Roberto Capodieci told Visto, “and then I verified the codes through the whole path of that message and I had confirmation that it really arrived from the President”.

A great satisfaction for this young man raised on “bread and computers” who believes that we don’t have to waste a moment of our lives. And it is for this reason, maybe, that he hasn’t wasted a moment: when he was 5 years old, helped by his father, he studied computer programming concepts and BASIC language. At the age of 10 he created his first computer game and sold it in the shops of his town district. At the age of 14 he opened a personal business as a computer consultant, working also for the University of Padua. At the age of 21 with a local provider he started an Internet service in Mestre. Today, at the age of 22, he created “il gruppo Akropolys” [Note: This is a mistake of the journalist - Roberto created "il gruppo Akropolys", the Akropolys group, at the age of 15 and at age 22, he created "RCX Soluzioni Informatiche, RCX Information Solutions] and he is a freelancer. Big companies utilize his experience, and even the Attorney’s Office of the Court of Venice and the Drug Enforcement unit of the Italian Police use him for delicate cases. Last May, for example, he collaborated in the operation “Acropoli” [Note: The police operation used the name of Roberto's company, because of the great service he performed for them.] in which 41 persons were arrested and 38 people sentenced, both new and old criminals of the cocaine and ecstasy market in Venice.

And it is not only in his work that Roberto Capodieci has been precocious. A lover of travel and motorbikes, he has visited half the world, and is the father of a beautiful 5 year old kid [* see below]. It was in thinking about young children who at a tender age are taking their first steps with the computer, and of all those children who enjoy themselves in the wonderful world of the Internet, that the young man of Mestre uncovered fraud inside one of the most disgusting Internet sites. “I was investigating pedophiles”, Roberto explains, thinking of the chronicle of events. “Internet is a net which anything can pass through. Including thousands of shocking pictures, too, with children as the protagonists of erotic performances. And it is very difficult to find out who is behind this terrible market, because the names, addresses and language codes are masked.

“Searching in these particular sites”, the expert continues, “I was amazed because there was someone who offered me the chance of utilizing a ‘very interesting’ site for free. I discovered that, actually, the modem connection (a computer peripheral that transforms data into sounds first, then into data) at a certain moment was interrupted and the telephone line was reconnected to a telephonic number beginning with the international prefix (0115). From that moment on, the unaware user was using the Internet while paying the price of an international call, amassing astronomical phone bills. I realized this because, using the Internet for many years, I use security systems on my PC”.

Roberto Capodieci immediately reported this large fraud, which had already given some million dollars to its proprietors, to the Internet Crimes Department of the FBI. The investigation of the young man of Mestre had an immediate effect. The site was closed and, after a while, it opened again, but this time with a notice to users that any connection to the site occurs through a payment phone number.

“An ignorant fraud”, Roberto Capodieci explains, “because its inventors have their base in the USA. To escape every regulation, it would be enough to move the site into one of those countries, like the Dominican Republic, where laws about this field don’t exist, nor the chance to be caught.”

To use the Internet is a true drug. The young computer genius is sure of this fact, fascinated but also afraid because of the incredible evolution that the computer has had in these last years. “In front of the monitor,
closed inside a room, you feel safe. But with the Internet you have the world in front of you and you can’t avoid some risks. I can understand the parents of the two young girls who ran away from home in Siena a little while ago, their fear that the girls could have fallen into the trap of a criminal.” It is for this reason that Roberto Capodieci suggests that parents to remain close to their children, to learn to use their computers, to see what they do, to control them most of all if they spend too much time with the PC and neglecting everything else.

“We have got to remember, also, that Internet is a free land. And the market that is around this collective passion is wild, too. How is it possible, for example, that here in Italy we have got to pay to use the Internet while in the USA the connection is free?”

Also in this direction with his maxi-computer Roberto Capodieci continues his investigations, exploring the world via cable, especially by night. This big brain has got big projects: among the immediate ones an archeological museum of information technology (who would have said that computers are already museum stuff?) and a handbook for safe navigation of the Internet. Meanwhile, his address for any suggestions or rescues is: http://www.musa.it/rcx/ [Note: This website no longer exists]*