Man Gets 5 Years for Blowing Up Toilet

[analyst]

Man Gets 5 Years for Blowing Up Toilet

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- A man once called one of the Internet's most notorious pirates of music and movies was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for plowing up a portable toilet, prosecutors said.

Bruce Forest, 50, was charged last year with a series of toilet explosions in 2005 and 2006. But under a plea agreement, Forest admitted only to blowing up one toilet in Weston in February 2006. No one was injured in any of the blasts.

His defense attorney and his wife said the incident was completely out of character for Forest. They said he had been addicted to painkillers initially taken for migraine headaches caused by a severe fall about 10 years ago. A prescribed drug intended to wean him off the painkillers caused psychotic episodes, they said.

Forest was an Internet pirate in the late 1990s, said J.D. Lasica, a San Francisco writer who dubbed Forest "Prince of the Darknet" in his 2005 book "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation."

His wife also discounted those claims. She said he actually worked with the federal government to tighten safeguards against piracy.

Prosecutors said Forest began a string of bombings in Weston where he blew up portable toilets in 2005 and 2006. He was also charged in explosions at the former Fitch School in Norwalk and at an abandoned gas station in Weston.

Most of the explosions occurred at night in isolated areas, but the last blast in Norwalk occurred during the day in a heavily populated area, authorities said. The explosives involved a mixture of chemicals, police said. Prosecutors said they were detonated by an assault rifle.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld ... -headlines

[sebastian_v]