To complement the computer crime specific legislation, Congress amended traditional criminal statutes to include crimes that involved computers and included enhanced sentences for crimes committed with the help of computers. For example, the Sentencing Guidelines allow longer sentences for defendants that used special skills--which includes computer skills--in the commission of a crime.

As the Ninth Circuit explained in United States v. Mainard: In a sense, abuse of a special skill is a special kind of abuse of trust. It is a breach of the trust that society reposes in a person when it enables him to acquire and have a skill that other members of society do not possess.... When the person turns those skills to evil deeds, a special wrong is perpetrated upon society, just as other abuses of trust perpetrate a special wrong upon their victims. Law enforcement agencies have successfully apprehended and prosecuted a number of individuals under the CFAA for unauthorized access and misuse of computer systems.

For example, in United States v. Phillips, a University of Texas student, in violation of the University's acceptable computer use policy, gained unauthorized access to government and private computers and managed to accumulate a large volume of personal and proprietary data, such as credit card and bank account information, birth records, passwords, and Social Security numbers. When the University's Information Security Office learned about the suspicious Internet activities of the student, it issued several warnings but took no meaningful action. Moreover, the University admitted Phillips, then an undergraduate student, to its graduate computer science program. After Philips caused numerous crashes of university computer systems, the University finally contacted the Secret Service. Written by James M. Sheehan, Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Division, FBI Los Angeles.