Growing up in rural Lacrosse, Wash., Robert Moore reached adolescence and discovered he was a high school misfit. Suffering from several ailments, including narcolepsy, Moore skipped playing sports, the normal path to small-town popularity.

He moved to Spokane, graduated from North Central High School and became skilled enough to land several jobs, including a project for one firm needing anti-spam software.

In 2005, a Florida man, Edwin Pena, found Moore's site and asked him to create a tool for detecting certain types of network computers that worked with a new technology, Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

About a year later, FBI agents showed up at Moore's north Spokane home and arrested him, charging him with federal wire fraud and computer hacking. They also arrested Pena in Miami. Pena, 25, jumped bail and fled the country and is believed to be living in South America.

Moore, now 23, was nabbed because he designed the software tools Pena used to bilk Internet phone companies of more than $1 million in unpaid VoIP phone charges.

Next month, Moore will begin serving two years in a federal prison at a site not yet revealed. The New Jersey federal judge who sentenced him also ordered Moore to pay $152,000 in restitution to victims of the scheme.

The case created international attention. It marked the first large-scale hacking of the VoIP system. Moore used his 12 home computers to find vulnerable network doorways, called ports.

He pleaded guilty to the charges, acknowledging his role but saying he was just a provider of information that Pena misused for personal gain.

"What I did was totally wrong, and I have to pay for it," Moore said. "But Edwin was the guy who stole the minutes and resold them. All I did was find passwords for (network computers) that he wanted to use."

Many who wrote about or discussed the VoIP break-in said Moore's use of fairly unsophisticated tools, coupled with some special software he designed, pointed out major security holes in many corporate networks.