[1] http://www.justice.gov/usao/ohn/news/2010/Mitchell%20Frost%2...
The prosecution seeks the max, in this case 15 years, to persuade the defendant to plea the case out. His options are to try and defend himself with no resources (a public defender is worth next to nothing) or make a deal. The prosecutor and judge get to look "tough on computer crime" which will help their resume when looking to advance their careers, and the kid gets to have the end of his 20's. All that is left out is "justice", and by that I mean let the punishment fit the crime. And now society must carry the debt, both economically (housing the kid) and socially - will our streets be safer over the course of his lifetime once he gets churned out of prison.
You're also exaggerating. The defendant does get to have the end of his twenties. He's going to be out of jail when he's 26.
When they accuse him of "fraudulently obtaining user names and passwords and stealing personal identification and financial information" - does that mean he went after this information, or more likely one of the computers in the botnet happened to have such information residing on it. It's possible he didn't know of any financial information and they would throw the book at him anyway just to get the initial charge and work down from there. We all know there are differences in computer crime, that our legal system isn't able to make a distinction does not make an argument.
No it is not possible. Had you actually read the above references as you claimed you would know that after executing a search warrant the FBI found credit card numbers and SSNs on computers in his dorm room. It's in Section 12 of the FBI document. Sure, maybe that was a result of a chat room he was logging. Maybe he didn't specifically go after this information himself. But at the very least he still chose to retain that information on his computer and at worst he did indeed go after the information himself.
Maybe this punishment fits this crime and its the other that doesn't, but marcusbooster's indictment of the system as a whole having some skewed incentives still has some merit, i think.