Almost none of that matches up to what OP says, but without outing him it's hard to know if we're even talking about the same person. I'm looking for the aforementioned high-profile "press releases by the justice department," because this would be the first time I've ever heard of the state or feds go to the trouble of prosecuting just one single charge against someone, without filing any others, convicting someone, and the sentence being "special assignments" instead of fines, prison, restitution and/or probation. This one sounds like Reddit "and then everyone clapped" nonsense. Look at what Swartz faced over downloading some bullshit-- they were going to fuck him so brutally, he killed himself.

> I wonder if he's downplaying it to potential employers and then background searches + googling reveals the truth?

That's usually what I find, hence my speculation. The pretext is always the same-- I have baggage, won't pass a background check, but here's what really happened. It's usually a semi-accurate account of their latest conviction and framed as though this is their biggest obstacle in life. Every now and then some well-meaning fool (or cheapskate) mistakes feigned honesty for integrity and skips the background check to feel good about themselves helping some poor soul overcome a hurdle, and never discovers the rest of the story.

If the dox are accurate, I found the press release. We're looking at:

> In addition to the prison sentence, [name], [age], of [location], was sentenced to [y] years of supervised release and ordered to pay [r] in restitution and [f] in forfeiture.

lol, you wordsmith. "Wasn't incarcerated" indeed. You got both probation and restitution after all.

This sentence was handed to him for a yearslong operation involving reselling of access to stolen credentials (running a platform that injected them into curl requests and submitted them to the destination on behalf of his own clients, I assume), and an extortion attempt (a shakedown over the vulnerability that facilitated this?), with the stated impact of:

> One of the [victims] sustained losses of approximately $[m] million

I recognize that claimants always exaggerate those numbers. So you made lot of money doing something illegal and have been ordered to pay it back. You can't escape garnishment for this, not even through bankruptcy, and you will be making things right over time. The crime itself, big fucking deal. You didn't kill anybody through reckless negligence. We all do dumb shit in our youth, and my own company wastes way more than that YoY on legit-but-broken SaaS products.

So here's some constructive criticism: you are clearly a competent developer. Stop with the lies-by-omission and reframing of the situation and own what you did. Your lying about it is earning you those rejections, because there's only one way to respond to deception of this magnitude. Even if you slip past screening, anyone in Payroll who sees a multimillion-dollar garnishment order against you (or anyone who Googles your goddamn name) may ask questions, so you'll always be on borrowed time. Get ahead of the narrative by owning it. "Yes, I did this, it was a dumb idea when I was a stupid kid who didn't know any better, but I've learned my lesson." The "trust-me-I'm-autistic" stuff is deplorable-- cut that shit out.

The "special projects" bit is a reference to an actual program run by the DOJ for the benefit of crime victims. It works with crime-adjacent professionals (i.e., therapists and funeral directors) to help crime victims cope with or recover from being victimized. But it doesn't work with defendants, and even if it did, working with the Special Projects group wouldn't allow a defendant to avoid a sentence; at best it would reduce time served.

Regardless, the OP's claims don't add up, since there weren't any DOJ press releases since 2020 for a computer crime where the defendant plead to a single charge and didn't serve time, and also happened to be a guy who is well-known in the Ruby community. (The guy doxxed in the dead comments was sentenced to several years in March and is currently serving in a federal penitentiary where he wouldn't have access to the Internet.)