A journalism student at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas who used the online alias "No" and "MMMM" faces 15 years in prison and $500,000 in fines if she is convicted of hacking charges related to the group "Anonymous."

The Rebel Yell reported that the FBI arrested 20-year-old Mercedes Renee Haefer last week for allegedly participating in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against PayPal’s website.

In a campaign known as "Operation Payback," members of "Anonymous" succeeded in taking down the online operations of PayPal, MasterCard Worldwide, Visa, Swiss bank PostFinance and others after the companies dropped their financial services to WikiLeaks.

According to an FBI affidavit obtained by The Smoking Gun, federal agents launched an investigation into the attacks against PayPal in early December, after the company contacted the agency. PayPal provided the FBI with eight Internet protocol (IP) addresses that were hosting an Internet relay chat (IRC) site used by "Operation Payback" to organize attacks.