David L. Smith
Melissa was put in the wild by David L. Smith of Aberdeen Township, New Jersey and named after a Miami stripper. (The worm itself was credited to Kwyjibo, who was shown to be macrovirus writers VicodinES and ALT-F11 by comparing MS Word documents with the same globally unique identifier — this method was also used to trace the worm back to Smith.) Smith was sentenced to 10 years, serving 20 months, and was fined US $5,000. The arrest was the result of a collaborative effort involving (amongst others) the FBI, the New Jersey State Police, Monmouth Internet and a Swedish computer scientist.
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