Ahh, I think I see what the issue with our viewpoints is.

Yes, his clients were the ones who were the agents propagating his software. But by selling this software for these explicit reasons, that also gives him liability. If I create a trojan and stick it on my website for anyone to download with the explicit knowledge it is a trojan and is for research purposes only.....that is one thing. If I SELL YOU the trojan for the explicit purpose of using it as such....that is an entirely different thing. This isn't the same as selling guns, unless your add says 'Our brand of gun is the best for robbing liquor stores and shooting unfaithful spouses'. Gun stores generally don't sell you guns when you tell them you want to use them to rob and shoot people.

I doubt that the majority of the people he sold software to even knew that the intended activities were illegal.

By having the software pushing the data to his own servers he was adding more rope to hang himself with.

Kind of funny tho, slap a price tag on it and you get paid for your social engineering and hacking in a pseudo legit fashion. *sighs*