Source:
C|Net
A celebrity porn deal gone bad could be the key to cracking the T-Mobile hacking case, publicity professional David Hans Schmidt said Friday.
Late Tuesday night, an amateur porn video of Limp Bizkit lead singer Fred Durst and an unknown woman hit the Internet. Schmidt, a Phoenix-based publicist who has made a business out of representing celebrities for the sale of nude photos, said that people describing themselves as hackers who stole the video from Durst's PC had approached him to cut a deal with the singer. The video appeared online after the purported hackers backed out of the talks, Schmidt said.
Schmidt's contact information was posted alongside the video on the Internet, supporting his claims that he had been negotiating with the online thieves.
"I've been talking to Durst's manager for a month now," he said. "Now the deal is dead in the water. They (the purported online thieves) had illegal information, and I was trying to turn that into a deal for them."
The Firm, the management agency that represents Limp Bizkit, declined to comment Friday on the Durst video and on Schmidt's statements.
Schmidt said that the purported Durst hackers had claimed to also be responsible for hacking into the Sidekick mobile device belonging to celebrity heiress Paris Hilton. That information could be a break for T-Mobile, which provides cellular service for the device, and law enforcement agencies, which have been investigating how Hilton's personal information was leaked to the Internet.
Schmidt said he is planning to contact law enforcement officials on Friday to fully cooperate with their investigation. "I have a named contact to those (purported hackers), and I have their banking information," he said. "I'm seeking full prosecution of these people."
Reports that the video was stolen from a T-Mobile Sidekick device in a similar manner to the theft of Paris Hilton's information are incorrect, a representative for T-Mobile said on Friday. The company investigated the claims and found several inaccuracies.
"Fred Durst is not a T-Mobile subscriber," spokesman Bryan Zidar said. "The video in question could not have originated from a Sidekick; the device does not have video capability. The video is also of a resolution not available on a wireless handset."
Several blogs said that the three-minute Durst video had been posted by an alleged online thief who goes by the name of "T-Mobile Terrorist." These blogs also linked the video to a posting that included personal information on Schmidt and the message: "David Hans Schmidt...Nice try, but instead of you making money off this we'll give out for free. :)"
