Kim Schmitz
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Kim Schmitz aka Kimble (born January 21, 1974 in Kiel) is a German self-proclaimed hacker and businessman who has generated much publicity and has been convicted of computer fraud, insider trading and embezzlement.
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[edit] Hacking
In the late 90s Schmitz gained publicity through his several high profile break-in claims. He was part of the German BBS scene and had his own BBS called "House of Coolness". On March 23 1998, Schmitz was sentenced to two years on probation for computer fraud: he had hacked into a large number of X.25-connected corporate computer systems and abused international telephone services.
His arrogant style of dealing with the computer scene and his publication of technical details on phone phreaking earned him top spots on the "Most Hated Person" charts in the Worldcharts diskmag for years ahead. (As of the last issue, released in 2002, he was #6.)
[edit] data protect
By the time he was sentenced, he had already founded a computer security company called "data protect", a contributing factor to the court's decision not to send him back to jail where he had already suffered two months of detention. He sold data protect in 2000 to "TÜV Rheinland". In 2001 TÜV Data Protect was renamed to TÜV SecureIT.
[edit] Insider trading and embezzlement
In 2001 Schmitz bought $375,000 worth of shares of the nearly bankrupt company "LetsBuyIt.com" and subsequently announced his intention of investing EUR 50 Million in the company, money he did not have, creating the biggest single-day rise of a share price in the history of the German stock market. He quickly sold his shares and walked away with a profit of $1.5 million. He was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand in January 2002 and later that year was sentenced to a probationary sentence of one year and eight months, and a EUR 100,000 fine. This had been the largest insider-trading case in Germany at that time.[1]
Also in 2001, Schmitz had arranged and obtained an unsecured loan of EUR 280,000 from Monkey AG, a company for which he served as chairman of the board, to be paid to his company Kimvestor AG. Both companies went bankrupt soon after. He pleaded guilty to embezzlement in November 2003 and received a sentence of two years on probation.[2]
[edit] PR stunts
Aside from his flamboyant corporate activities, Schmitz received attention for several PR stunts. In 1999 he drove around in the Munich airport for hours and took photos of himself in the cockpits of parked airplanes. In 2001 he offered a reward of USD 10 million for capture of Osama Bin Laden. His newly founded hacker group "YIHAT" (Young intelligent hackers against terrorism) did not succeed in any of their anti-terrorism goals.
In January 2002 he made an obscure statement on his web site that could have been interpreted as announcing his own suicide. In fact this announcement was just part of a marketing campaign for his new project "Kimpire". The Kimpire website was a central point with links to all of his projects and companies.
[edit] Other activities
On CeBIT 1999 in Hannover, he displayed a Mercedes S-Class equipped with a GSM channel bank for in-car Internet access and video conferencing. The prohibitive cost of 16 parallel connections turned the project into a huge commercial failure.
Since 2001, Schmitz has had media coverage as a founder of a Hong Kong based investing company called Trendax. The company claimed to use AI to maximize investment return, and Schmitz tried to find investors for a hedge fund managed by the company.[3]
Schmitz is also active in the streetracing scene. He took part in the Gumball 3000 rally several times and was the first to finish in 2001. He ran a website that claimed he is organising a street race called "Ultimate Rally". The event was originally announced for August 2006, but was postponed to 2007 after collecting money from potential participants. In late 2006, the concept was sold to an unknown investor, and entrants received a refund.
Schmitz is currently reported living between Germany, Hong Kong, Dubai, Philippines and Australia. As of late 2006, a number of his websites (including www.kimble.org) are blank. Despite accusations of content infringement, his latest project megarotic.com has rocketed to a top 50 position in the Alexa highest traffic sites list.
Right now, it is said that Schmitz runs various Websites, including megaupload.com, which had been registered in Hong Kong to his company, Monkey Ltd. It is now registered to Megaupload Ltd.
[edit] References
- ^ Luring German Investors Back Into The Pool, Business Week, 12 April 2004
- ^ Schnelles Ende im neuen Kimble-Prozess, Heise.de. (German)
- ^ "Whatever happened to...?; A look at high-tech promises, kept and broken", The International Herald Tribune, 25 November 2002
