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IT Pro Gets Prison Time For Sabotaging Ex-Employer's System

Posted by Soulskill on from the fractions-of-a-penny dept.

itwbennett writes: "In June 2012, Ricky Joe Mitchell of Charleston, West Virginia, found out he was going to be fired from oil and gas company EnerVest and in response he decided to reset the company's servers to their original factory settings. He also disabled cooling equipment for EnerVest's systems and disabled a data-replication process. After pleading guilty in January, Mitchell has been sentenced to four years in federal prison."

40 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Duh... by TJ_Phazerhacki · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The point at which this guy admitted he maliciously tampered with equipment, he was screwed. He should have argued that he was incompetent...

    --
    Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
    1. Re:Duh... by Rob+the+Bold · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The point at which this guy admitted he maliciously tampered with equipment, he was screwed. He should have argued that he was incompetent...

      I've seen more than one shop where some vital/important system required the personal intervention of one particular guy to get up and going again in the event that something needed to be reset/rebooted/repaired. I don't believe it was malice, just incompetence, overconfidence, understaffing or some combination that resulted in a plausibly deniable deadman switch.

      --
      I am not a crackpot.
    2. Re:Duh... by TWX · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He never should have mounted an argument in the first place. He never should have spoken with authorities without his own representation, and probably not even with his own representation.

      Ignoring for a moment that his choice to act maliciously was what truly screwed him, law enforcement authorities are quite practiced at getting people to admit fault or to use language that allows the authorities to claim an admission. The only winning move is to not participate.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    3. Re:Duh... by NotSoHeavyD3 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Here's the only video you need to see about this (Yes it's long but it's interesting) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

      --
      Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
    4. Re:Duh... by rmdingler · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Smart people do dumb things when they're upset. According to TFA, he hacked into a protected computer to create the turmoil.

      I'll bet you a dogecoin he believed he was clever enough not to leave any traces back to himself.

      Inexperienced with law enforcement methods (or perhaps the consequences/repercussions anomaly), it probably didn't occur to him what one of the first lines of inquiry would be.

      Anyone in IT that might be disgruntled?

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    5. Re:Duh... by zildgulf · · Score: 2

      Lessons Learned:

      1. Never actively sabotage your employer's equipment in the event that you are let go.
      2. Never talk to the police or court without a lawyer. Even an incompetent lawyer is better than representing solely yourself.

    6. Re:Duh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's the famous Dont Talk to Police video by James Duane and that other guy.
      It's an interesting video, but would it have hurt to say which video it was? I suspect most people here have already seen it.

    7. Re:Duh... by jxander · · Score: 4, Funny

      And the next question is something like "Anyone got a $5 wrench?"

      --
      This signature is false.
    8. Re:Duh... by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you are not a criminal, present evidence to the police that you are not a criminal

      Incorrect. Present nothing. Say nothing. Do not open your mouth. Stare into space. Daydream. Meticulously mentally design a house in your mind.

      Repeat after me:

      Silence

      Silence

      Silence

    9. Re:Duh... by Hewligan · · Score: 2

      Yes, as was posted just above: Don't talk to police

      Or, to summarise, you are not helping the police catch a criminal. You are helping the police convict you of a crime. Whether or not you actually committed the crime is irrelevant.

      --

      "If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated"

    10. Re:Duh... by sjames · · Score: 2

      Because they'll be playing pin the crime on the donkey and if you talk, all they'll here is HEEE HAW.

    11. Re:Duh... by Jhon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "Never talk to the police, ever! Lawyer or no lawyer."

      I hear this often and take issue with it. Last year, my daughter was kidnapped from our home in the middle of the night. My wife, son and I talked to high-heaven answering every question, letting them look at every thing they wanted. FBI, too.

      My goal was to let them rule us out as fast as humanly possible (which they did).

      I understand your sentiment, but those words "never" and "ever" that makes it just wrong.

      (Daughter was recovered. Monster is about to go on trial)

    12. Re:Duh... by Rob+the+Bold · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Then you are an idiot, a fool, a liar, or some combination of them.

      Well, I guess you're mean, rash, socially awkward, or some combination of those. I was referring to the situations I'd witnessed myself that had some similarity to the situation in TFA, not TFA guy. Seeing as I was suggesting a similar situation with a possible non-criminal explanation, whereas TFA guy admitted to doing it deliberately, I didn't think it was confusing.

      Or maybe you just read my comment too quickly before posting.

      --
      I am not a crackpot.
    13. Re:Duh... by Mr.+Shotgun · · Score: 2

      Former US District attorney and now defense attorney has several great posts on the first rule of dealing with the police and prosecutors, namely shut up. Anything you may think you can say to help the police can be said with the representation of a lawyer. If, after reading through those examples and explanations, you still wonder why everyone says to shut up then there is no convincing you and you can go on your merry way. May you never have to deal with the police when there are looking to pin someone for a crime and you happen to be in the area.

      --
      Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
    14. Re:Duh... by KingOfBLASH · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In the last shop I worked with, on April Fool's day, when a new guy asked for a database command he was told "DROP DATABASE *;" thinking no one could be that stupid.

      Except he was. Fortunately April Fool's day that year was a friday and IT had the weekend to fix the mess

    15. Re:Duh... by yacc143 · · Score: 2

      Because the police is not interested in catching the criminal. They are interestesting in arresting somebody that could get realistically convicted.

      they need the statistics to look good.

      police officers have been known to get the wrong belief.

      police officers do lie, and they commit perjury. Can land you in innocently in death row. (And the funny part is, because a crime needs to be proven, and many of the crimes that law enforcment commits require intend, and intend is always very hard to prove, these creeps tend to go home freely.)

      From having seen it myself, an interrogation is quite often not much better than bullying the "suspect" into confessing. "Ok, so you don't want to confess, no problem, let us book you, and we'll talk again with you when you've lost your job for not being there for some days. In the meantime we'll probably have to check on all your family, bring them in for interrogation, I'm sure their employers will be understanding if we question them for a day, ...." While many innocent people might be okay with fighting for their innocence, see how many won't try to avoid pulling their family into the hole?

      So basically, never talk to the police tends to be a good starting point. Try to prepare mentally. Use any breaks the system allows you, and that means "do not talk" and "ask for a lawyer". Fact is that nearly everything you say can be twisted into making you look bad.

    16. Re:Duh... by Slashdot+Parent · · Score: 2

      Smart people do dumb things when they're upset.

      I'm pretty sure that all people are capable of doing dumb things when we are upset. It's just that smart people can conjure up ways to cause more damage.

      I am always disgusted when I see IT "professionals" who leave a trail of destruction in their wakes when they leave. It's completely immature, and perhaps if they had applied all of that effort toward adding value instead of destroying it, they wouldn't have been sacked in the first place.

      --
      They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
  2. Ashamed! by sentiblue · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He ruins our IT/Ops names...

    He doesn't deserve the term "Pro"

    1. Re:Ashamed! by mlts · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Four years for causing a million dollars worth of damage isn't that harsh a sentence. What would the verdict be if someone came into a facility with a cutting torch and did the same amount of physical damage? It likely would result in an arrest for some terrorism-related charge. Blanking out servers may not be as obvious as driving a semi into some core machinery, but it does the same exact thing, especially if there are no backups. The machinery may be intact, but if there is some manufacturing process that took years to develop and fine-tune, that knowledge can be lost forever.

      This guy got off lightly, and the lesson that EnerVest has learned is that they are probably going to get their next admin or admins from Tata or Infosys, and it won't be surprising to see more companies doing the same thing.

      A friend of mine had to clean up a mess (logic bombs left behind that would corrupt arrays and reset LTO tape passwords) that was similar, due to a disgruntled admin. After he cleaned up the mess and tested that backups were working on separate hardware, he was shown the door, and an offshore company hired for all IT work. The reason: "H-1Bs do not commit sabotage."

    2. Re:Ashamed! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Informative

      He ruins our IT/Ops names...

      He doesn't deserve the term "Pro"

      Right. "Pros" don't get caught!

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    3. Re:Ashamed! by Dahamma · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Four years for causing a million dollars worth of damage isn't that harsh a sentence.

      I might agree with you if Wall Street scammers didn't get less for causing HUNDREDS of millions in losses to their customers. And not from a one-time "flip out", but years of knowingly and systematically screwing over everyone who trusted them...

    4. Re:Ashamed! by kelemvor4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "H-1Bs do not commit sabotage."

      Absolutely, allowing foreign nationals access to your systems is COMPLETELY safe. Moreover, they don't get angry when you take away their livelihood.

    5. Re:Ashamed! by taustin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, between the equal protection clause of the 4th amendment and the cruel and unusual clause of the 8th, it isn't difficult to argue that it does, in fact, mean just that.

    6. Re:Ashamed! by epyT-R · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Usually the damage estimates are way overstated, so I don't buy it on that assumption, and usually people don't engage in that behavior unless they were treated reprehensibly by their employer beforehand. Perhaps the real solution here is for management to act like human beings instead of jackals.

      If they do outsource, they'll just learn their lesson the hard way. Tata employees don't give a shit about you or your goals, and their code is buggy and broken, requiring a local side programmer to clean up their mess anyway.

      H-1Bs are often treated as slave labor by aforementioned jackal management. I can guarantee they will throw their sabo into the works at some point the moment they have any power, which will happen when there are no more localside programmers left thanks to attitudes like yours.

    7. Re:Ashamed! by careysub · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, between the equal protection clause of the 4th amendment and the cruel and unusual clause of the 8th, it isn't difficult to argue that it does, in fact, mean just that.

      Amen to that. If you have two sets of crimes ones committed by the fabulously wealthy (Wall Streeters, bankers - non one else is in the position to carry out such fraud) which do vast damage, and ones that are committed by ordinary citizens that do comparatively trivial amounts of damage, and that latter set are prosecuted far more vigorously, with much harsher punishments than the former, then we do not truly have a system of laws any longer, we have a system of (very rich) men.

      One is reminded of this: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." - Anatole France

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    8. Re:Ashamed! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Do you even have to look as far as wall streeters to find inequal punishment in the US?

      I turn on the TV every other week to see some US celebrity or another has gotten high on crack or heroin and smashed their luxury sports car through the front of somebodies house or something and gotten community service or 30 days.

      Had it been some urban black kid it would have been 5 years hard time.

      What is it about being a celebrity in the US that entitles you to break the law with reckless abandon?

  3. He's lucky by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If he had hacked in from outside the company and done that much damage, he probably would have gotten more than 4 years.

    1. Re:He's lucky by Wintermute__ · · Score: 3, Informative

      He did. He "hacked in to a protected computer". Also:

      "Mitchell is no stranger to computer-related controversy. In high school, he was accused of planting more than 100 viruses on the school's systems, according to a report in the Charleston Gazette newspaper."

      Great choice, let's hire him!

    2. Re:He's lucky by pkinetics · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Accused is not the same as convicted.

      However in his case, he admitted to do it, but wormed his way into being allowed to finish out school. First failure of due process.

      The second failure was the court deciding to drop the matter because he had already graduated, so nothing they could do about it.

  4. He turned job termination into career termination by JoeyRox · · Score: 4, Informative

    And likely life termination as well. What a complete and utter moron.

  5. Glue his fingers together so he cant use a pc by mpicpp · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've cleaned up messes and had to do data recovery after people deleted their work, reformatted machines, etc. and then quit. I have no sympathy at all for people that do this type of stuff...

  6. Re:Ethics by DocSavage64109 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I was talking to an employee who was fired, but still around for a couple of days to clean up her stuff. She asked if I had backups, because she wanted to delete all of the projects she was working on. I told her that she was paid to do that work and I doubt if other people will go through her work that much anyway. Why go the unethical route when it just makes you look bad?

    I bet this guy could have just left, and assuming he was useful, the company would soon be feeling the pain anyway.

  7. Crappy headline by NotSanguine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This guy is no professional. A professional does his job. That's what he/she is paid to do. Since this person was getting fired, I'm guessing he wasn't meeting expectations. Even if it was a broader layoff, there's no reason to act so unprofessionally.

    Not sure if he deserves jail time, but there is no reason to break stuff on your way out the door. I'm glad I know this guy's name. I will certainly never hire him.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
  8. Re:Ethics by ultranova · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why go the unethical route when it just makes you look bad?

    Because humans are herd animals, and corporate politics purposefully try to reinforce this - it's what "team building" and "commitment to job" is ultimately all about. This means that getting fired tends to register at the emotional level: you are being banished from your tribe. Add any actual or perceived injustice, and revenge becomes a factor.

    Modern economic system is pretty perverse, as far as human needs are concerned, so people caught in it tend to act irrationally.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  9. Re:And in jail.. by NotSanguine · · Score: 3, Funny

    "So, what have you done to get in here?" "I just reset the system of my ex-boss, he was too stupid to recover a backup so he sued me and put me in jail"

    I couldn't resist...

    And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's Where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after Committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly Looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father Rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And They was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the Bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest Father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me And said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench There, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I Said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, And we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, Father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the Bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of Things,

    --Arlo Guthrie

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
  10. Re:Ethics by rmdingler · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Well put.

    And not for nothing, as the grandparent's viewpoint is a sound one... Why be unethical even if you believe you've been done dirty? Hold your head high on the way out the door saying, "I was looking for a job when I found this one." Even if you don't feel it right then, you will be right proud of yourself later on.

    + to you both.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  11. Criminal damage by benjfowler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Open-and-shut case of criminal damage.

    What's amazing, is that there are still neckbeards out where who think that just because they're techies, that norms of proper human behaviour don't belong to them.

  12. Criminal Commits Crime - News at 11! by Chucky_M · · Score: 2

    Seriously, read the article (and then I remembered where I was) he deserved to be banged up, changing jobs voluntary or not is a nasty fact of life in this economy. If you sabotage your ex employers systems then you should expect they will hire someone who isn't so stupid and is able to detect it. Business has money, what it doesn't have is patience. During a major problem they will simply hire temporary talent that will be smarter than you because they haven't spent the last few years doing a job with no destiny and can concentrate on one thing - what you did.

    This trade for want of a better world is too small to even attempt to annoy not only your ex employees but more importantly all your ex colleges. This guy is clearly an idiot who should be taken away from a keyboard. On the flip side, frankly he is probably needing a better lawyer, to do something so stupid his defence should have been more mental or stress related assuming he even had a clue.

    West Virginia, Division of Corrections - Take him home, where he belongs.....

  13. Re:Fair punishment by gabrieltss · · Score: 2

    In some states their labor laws explicitly allow companies to make you work 2 weeks straight without a day off as long as they give you 1 day off before and after the 2 week shift. Been through that - and it's criminal in my mind - but legal. Companies have the money and power to do whatever they want and can get away with it. There are lots of things companies do and can get away with because they can payoff people to make things happen for them. Yet you rarely see company executives go to prison for some of the stuff they do.

    --
    The Truth is a Virus!!!
  14. But what about the other way around by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What about when businesses do things like wreck people's lives through baseless lawsuits, blacklist people, baseless DMCA takedowns, etc? I don't see any 4 year sentences for those actions.

    This seems to be another example of where some individual does wrong and the system comes down on him. But when corporate/government types do wrong the system comes to their defence.