A 20-year-old Tumwater man is scheduled to make his initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Tacoma tomorrow afternoon on charges that he and two others hacked into Comcast's Web site and disrupted Internet service a year and a half ago, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

James Robert Black Jr., aka "Defiant," is charged in an indictment with conspiring to disrupt service at Comcast's www.comcast.net Web Site on May 28 and 29, 2008. Also named in the indictment are Christopher Allen Lewis, 19, of Newark, Del., and Paul Nebel, 27, of Kalamazoo, Mich.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the three were associated with the hacker group Kryogeniks. The indictment charges that the three used their hacking skills to redirect all traffic destined for www.comcast.net to Web sites that they had established. As a result, Comcast customers trying to read their e-mail or listen to their voice mail were sent to a Web site on which the only thing that they could find was a message that read, "KRYOGENIKS Defiant and EBK RoXed COMCAST sHouTz to VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven."

The U.S. Attorney's Office alleges the hacking resulted in a loss to Comcast of approximately $128,000.

At the time the Comcast site was hacked, Black was living in Tennessee. He has since moved to Tumwater.

If convicted, each defendant faces a maximum possible sentence of 5 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and up to 3 years of supervised release. The court could also order the defendants to pay restitution.