Tour de France winner sentenced for hack of doping lab

Trojan siphoned 1,700 confidential files

Floyd Landis, the disgraced US cyclist who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France victory for doping, was handed a suspended 12-month prison sentence for his part in a hack of an anti-doping lab computer.

Arnie Baker, Landis's former trainer, also received a suspended 12-month term from the same French court in Nanterre, near Paris. The criminal hacking case stemmed from the use of a trojan to infect a computer at the Laboratoire National de Depistage du Dopage in 2006, a few weeks after the lab accused Landis of testing positive for testosterone during the Tour de France.

The lab that year reported that someone had broken into its computer systems. An investigation by a magistrate in Nanterre later found that someone used a trojan to download 1,742 files from the lab. The contents of some of those files later appeared in a memo on Baker's website that challenged the credibility of the lab.

A man named Alain Quiros later confessed to being the person who planted the trojan. He was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of €4,000.

Quiros was also convicted of breaching the computers of Greenpeace on behalf of French energy company EDF.

All three suspects were ordered to collectively pay €75,896 to the French lab.

Both Landis and Baker have maintained their innocence in the computer trespass case. During a trial, Landis's attorney said his client received the stolen documents from an anonymous sender. ®