Federal Agents Hunt Fugitive "Homeless Hacker" Under Indictment For Online “Anonymous” Attack

Federal marshals are hunting for an admitted member of “Anonymous” who last month fled the country while free on bond from a federal indictment charging him with orchestrating an online attack against government computers in California.

A lawyer for Christopher Doyon, a homeless 47-year-old who calls himself “Commander X,” recently told a federal judge that his client “has fled to Canada,” according to a filing in U.S. District Court in San Jose. As a result, an arrest warrant has been issued for Doyon, who is pictured in the above United States Marshals Service mug shots.

Named last September in a two-count felony indictment, Doyon was free on an unsecured $35,000 bond that he co-signed with a friend, lawyer Ed Frey. Now that Doyon has absconded, federal prosecutors are seeking the bond’s forfeiture, which would likely leave the 71-year-old Frey, an activist lawyer who represents the “Occupy Santa Cruz” organization, holding the bag.

Doyon and a codefendant have been charged with participating in a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the city of Santa Cruz’s web servers in retaliation for the banning of camping within city limits (a move that critics contended was targeted at homeless individuals living in the streets).

Prosecutors allege that the DDos attack came over four days in December 2010 and was coordinated by the People’s Liberation Front (PLF), an “online collective of individuals that was associated with collaborative hacking attacks motivated by political and social goals, often referred to as ‘hacktivism.’”

Doyon, who has identified himself as a PLF founder, previously vowed to fight the federal charges, noting that his counsel “will provide irrefutable evidence” of his innocence. Doyon, who was wearing a “Free Bradley Manning” t-shirt when he made this promise at a news conference last September, added that he was “immensely proud and humbled to my core” to be part of “Anonymous.”