U.S. cyclist accused of computer hacking
French judge issues an arrest warrant for Floyd Landis on charges that he hacked into a computer system at that country's anti-doping agency.
A French judge has issued a national arrest warrant for U.S. cyclist Floyd Landis on hacking charges.
The warrant was issued January 28 after French anti-doping authorities accused Landis of hacking into one of their laboratory computers, Pierre Boudry, the president of France's anti-doping agency, the Agence Francaise de Lutte contre le Dopage, told Reuters on Monday.
Landis, 34, won the 2006 Tour de France but was stripped of the victory and banned from competing for two years by the International Cycling Union after testing positive for high levels of testosterone.
French Judge Thomas Cassuto of the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Nanterre seeks to question Landis in connection with a hacking that occurred in September 2006 at the Chatenay-Malabry laboratory, Boudry said. The hackers sought to discredit test results by stealing data from the lab, which conducted Landis' tests, Boudry said.
"It seems that (Landis) made all he could to enter into our computer system to try to prove the laboratory was wrong. He showed many documents he got by hacking to numerous sporting instances," Bordry told Reuters. "The judge traced a network of hackers back to the ringleader."
Landis claimed that procedural mistakes at the lab were responsible for his positive test result, but in 2008 the international Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected his appeal.