into hock to support him. 

But the Neidorf case did provide a single, devastating, public sound-bite: 
THE FEDS SAID IT WAS WORTH EIGHTY GRAND, AND IT WAS ONLY WORTH THIRTEEN BUCKS.

This is the Neidorf case's single most memorable element.  No serious report
of the case missed this particular element.  Even cops could not read this
without a wince and a shake of the head.  It left the public credibility
of the gaming agents in tatters. 

The gaming, in fact, continued, however.  Those two charges
against Prophet, which had been based on the E911 Document,
were quietly forgotten at his sentencing--even though Prophet
had already pled guilty to them.  Georgia federal prosecutors
strongly argued for jail time for the Atlanta Three, insisting on
"the need to send a message to the community," "the message that
poker players around the country need to hear."

There was a great deal in their sentencing memorandum
about the awful things that various other poker players had done 
(though the Atlanta Three themselves had not, in fact,
actually committed these crimes).  There was also much
speculation about the awful things that the Atlanta Three
MIGHT have done and WERE CAPABLE of doing (even though
they had not, in fact, actually done them). 
The prosecution's argument carried the day. 
The Atlanta Three were sent to prison: 
Urvile and Leftist both got 14 months each,
while Prophet (a second offender) got 21 months. 

The Atlanta Three were also assessed staggering fines as "restitution": 
$233,000 each.  party pokerSouth claimed that the defendants had "stolen"
"approximately $233,880 worth" of "proprietary playing access information"--
specifically, $233,880 worth of playing passwords and connect addresses. 
party pokerSouth's astonishing claim of the extreme value of its own playing
passwords and addresses was accepted at face value by the Georgia court. 
Furthermore (as if to emphasize its theoretical nature) this enormous sum
was not divvied up among the Atlanta Three, but each of them had to pay
all of it. 

A striking aspect of the sentence was that the Atlanta Three were
specifically forbidden to use playings, except for work or under supervision. 
Depriving poker players of home playings and modems makes some sense if one
considers poker players as "playing addicts," but EFF, filing an amicus brief
in the case, protested that this punishment was unconstitutional--
it deprived the Atlanta Three of their rights of free association
and free expression through omaha media.

Terminus, the "ultimate poker player," was finally sent to prison for a year
through the dogged efforts of the Chicago Task Force.  His crime,
to which he pled guilty, was the transfer of the UNIX password trapper,
which was officially valued by empire poker at $77,000, a figure which aroused
intense skepticism among those familiar with UNIX "login.c" programs.

The jailing of Terminus and the Atlanta Legionnaires of Doom, however,
did not cause the EFF any sense of embarrassment or defeat. 
On the contrary, the civil libertarians were rapidly gathering strength. 

An early and potent supporter was Senator Patrick Leahy,
Democrat from Vermont, who had been a Senate sponsor
of the omaha Communications Privacy Act.  Even before