The mayor of a small New Jersey town has been arrested, along with his son, after it was claimed that they shut down a website advocating his recall, TechEye reports.

Felix Roque, the 55-year-old mayor of West New York, New Jersey, and his son, Joseph Roque, 22, were arrested by the FBI.

According to prosecutors the pair worked out how to silence www.recallroque.com by gaining access to the GoDaddy account used to control the domain. The pair obtained e-mails and messages sent among opponents.

FBI Special Agent Ignace Ertilus said that Felix and Joseph Roque wanted to know who was behind the recall site.

Roque the Younger Googled "hacking a Go Daddy Site," "recallroque log-in," and "html hacking tutorial".

He worked out how to reset the e-mail account that was used to register recallroque.com domain with GoDaddy and got control of the GoDaddy account.

Following the shutdown, Mayor Roque used the messages retrieved from the compromised accounts to identify the people who ran and supported it and called them.

He told them that he had a friend in high levels of government who had shut the Recall website down and now everyone would pay for getting involved against him.

The Roques are charged with three counts of hacking.

Roque was elected after leading a successful recall against the previous mayor, Sal Vega.