Ex-Employee Leeches Emails

A man fired from his job used his credentials to tap into his former company’s email system and forward emails from his coworker to his home. Its kinda like the way George Costanza left behind a briefcase with a tape recorder in it, but this way the employee faces a stiff fine and jail time.

From the Newswire:

A Utah man has been charged for illegally intercepting the e-mail of two officials at his former employer, a high-technology company in Salt Lake City, the Justice Department announced today.

William K. Dobson, 55, of Salt Lake City has been charged in a three-count criminal indictment, two for intercepting electronic communications and a third for illegally obtaining information from a protected computer.

The indictment alleges that Dobson had worked for a high- technology company that he had helped co-found and in which he remained a minority stockholder. After Dobson left the company over business and financial disagreements, he surreptitiously accessed the company’s e-mail system on two occasions to insert instructions that would intercept the electronic mail of the company’s chief executive officer and its vice president of engineering and send them to a new, unauthorized e-mail inbox that Dobson had created on the company’s system. The indictment further alleges that Dobson programmed his home computer to download these e-mails from the company for over a month, until his home was searched by the FBI in connection with this investigation. The indictment further alleges that Dobson read many of these e-mails, which included both business and personal information.

If convicted, Dobson faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, to be followed by up to three years of supervised release, a fine of up to $250,000 or twice the monetary gain or loss, and restitution to the victims.

He thought he was being sneaky. But the old company was having none of it. They called in the big guns with the FBI and now Dobson is screwed.