Farid Essebar was caught on August 26th, 2005 and charged with creating and disseminating the Zotob worm.  His arrest followed a 2 week investigation, spurred on by a $250k reward from Microsoft, who themselves hired 50 investigators to help.  The investigation was notable for the speed with which they tracked down the culprit.  

 

Investigators tracked him to Morocco, and also arrested Atilla Ekici in Turkey, who they believed hired Farid to write the Zotob worm.  Farid is both a citizen of Morocco and Russia.  It seems that his motivations were entirely financial, as the worm he wrote helped facilitate credit card scams.

 

Farid goes by the IRC name Diabl0 and is suspected of authoring several other viruses.  A year after his arrest, he was sentenced to two years in prison, although that sentence was later reduced to one year.

 

His time in prison did not disuade him from a life of crime, however.  In March of this year he was again arrested, this time by Thai police, on charges of hacking into a Swiss bank.  Thailand plans to extradite him to Switzerland where he'll face charges over an estimated $4 billion in damages to the financial systems there.

 

Farid Essebar pictured below: