The fan sent more than 500,000

e-mails.

BOSTON (AP) – A NASCAR fan who flooded Fox Entertainment with angry e-mails after a Red Sox game pre-empted an auto race pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge on Tuesday.

Michael Melo, of Billerica, pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge of damage to a protected computer system, admitting that he fired off more than a half-million e-mail messages to WFXT-TV 25 in Boston after the Red Sox game was aired instead of a NASCAR race in 2001.

The e-mail messages were automatically forwarded to Fox-25’s Los Angeles parent company, Fox Entertainment. The network, thinking it was a hacker attack, shut down Internet communication with the affiliate and was forced to spend about $36,000 to clean up the barrage.

Under a plea deal, the government recommended a sentence of six months confinement in a halfway house.

Magistrate Judge Robert B. Collings scheduled Melo’s sentencing for Aug. 12.