We (the club) got busted by the german police a few years ago. Several members got caught hacking into German government systems. As a result, the guys that got caught gave the police all the names of the different members (not good). Anyway, to make a long story short, the cops came to every members house (no search warent, Germans don't need them) and went through everything computer related. They took everything that you couldn't prove you paid for, and in some of the worst cases took all the computer equiptment. Some people ended up going to court and getting huge fines. The Germans don't play games when they catch you, they get pretty nasty.......
My ex brother in-law lost all his computers and got a 5000 DM fine. The bad part for me was half of the computers were mine. The good part for me was that I was still in the military and the germans couldn't charge me, that was left to the Americans......I got over on that part.
I pretty much stopped doing that sort of thing anymore, it's not worth it if you get caught, and they will catch you sooner of later. There have been a few times in the few years where I went after someone that tried to hack my system, but I never used a virus or did anything that distroied anything. I think the worst thing I've ever done was delete all the data on a HD that belonged to a boss of mine and put a porn clip that loaded at startup and looped till you turned the system off........I got a big laugh out of that.......... :twisted: