MILWAUKEE, May 8 (UPI) -- A self-styled Wisconsin anarchist who used the Internet nickname "Dr. Chaos" to recruit teens for his "Realm of Terror" was indicted by a federal grand jury for causing more than $800,000 damage in a more than two-year vandalism spree across the state.
Joseph Konopka, 25, faces a maximum 30 years in prison if convicted on all 13 counts against him. FBI documents showed the one-time computer technician met teenaged boys on an Internet site called "Teens for Satan." He allegedly would invite them to his job in Green Bay, Wis., to play computer games and teach them how to hack into computer systems.
One youth was convicted of hacking into a Defense Department computer system.
Konopka was charged Tuesday with 53 crimes from June 1998 to January 2001. The vandals blacked out more than 2,000 homes in November 1998 by shorting out a central Wisconsin power station with barbed wire.
Konopka and his disillusioned young recruits also disrupted radio and television broadcasts, disabled an air traffic control system, damaged the computer system of an Internet service provider, set fires and caused 28 power failures and 20 service disruptions at power plants.
During a break-in at Wisconsin Public Radio, they replaced studio programming with music, forcing the system to broadcast an emergency tone.
Konopka remains in custody in Chicago charged with storing sodium cyanide and potentially lethal potassium cyanide in Chicago's underground subway tunnels in March.
Former cohorts in "The Realm of Chaos" convicted of misdemeanor property damage in state courts cooperated with investigators tracking Konopka.
The indictment said Konopka encouraged young men with online chat names like "Riot Boy" and "Kill Now" "to join him in ventures designed to entertain themselves by engaging in property damage and then observing the consequences."
