Adrian Lamo, Hacker Who Turned In Chelsea Manning To The FBI, Found DEAD

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Adrian Lamo, the notorious computer hacker who reported Chelsea Manning to the FBI for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records, and was arrested for hacking into The New York Times and Microsoft, has died in Kansas at age 37.

Wichita Police Department Officer Charlie Davidson told the Wichita Eagle that there was “nothing suspicious about his death” and no indication that foul play was involved, but would not elaborate on the details of cause of his death.  It was not immediately clear how Lamo died.

Adrian lamo

Adrian Lamo was arrested in 2004 for hacking The New York Times and Microsoft.  (Reuters)

Fox News reports:

The computer hacker was living in Wichita for about a year, his friend Lorraine Murphy told the Wichita Eagle. She said she sent Lamo a message in December 2016 asking how he was and he said he was “homeless in Wichita.”

“Adrian was always homeless or on the verge of it,” Murphy said. “He bounced around a great deal, for no particular reason.”

She added: “He was a believer in the Geographic Cure. Whatever goes wrong in your life, moving will make it better. And he knew people all over the country.”

However, Lamo did not make many friends along the way. Murphy said he often received death threats for his hacking.

Davidson said there is “no indication foul play is involved in Lamo’s death.”

Manning, who is transgender and went by Bradley at the time of her arrest, was convicted in 2013 of leaking a trove of classified documents. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence and she was released from military prison in May 2017 after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence.

Following her release, Manning announced in January she has filed to run in Maryland for the seat of Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin.

Lamo testified that Manning contacted him because of his notoriety in the hacking community. He said the two met online after Manning read an article about Lamo, The Guardian reported.

He told the British newspaper that he thought about Manning “every day.”

“The decision was not one I decided to make, but was thrust upon me,” he said.

Lamo’s father, Mario, wrote a post on to Facebook mourning the death of his son.

“With great sadness and a broken heart I have to let know all of Adrian’s friends and acquaintances [sic] that he is dead. A bright mind and compassionate soul is gone, he was my beloved son.”

With great sadness and a broken heart I have to let know all of Adrian's friends and acquaintances that he is dead. A bright mind and compassionate soul is gone, he was my beloved son…

Posted by Mario Lamo on Thursday, March 15, 2018

He was convicted of computer fraud after he was arrested in 2004 for hacking The New York Times and Microsoft.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange commented on Lamo’s death calling him a ‘petty conman’ and a ‘snitch’

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