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Press Release For Immediate Release June 18, 2001	U.S. Department of Justice United States Attorney District of New Hampshire Federal Building 55 Pleasant Street, Room 352 Concord, New Hampshire 03301 603/225-1552

Hampton Man Convicted and Sentenced for Hacking into Former Employer's Computer Server

 

CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE--United States Attorney for the District of New Hampshire Gretchen Leah Witt announced today that Patrick McKenna of Hampton, New Hampshire, has been sentenced by United States District Judge Joseph A. DiClerico to serve six (6) months in federal prison, followed by a two-year period of supervised release. McKenna was convicted and sentenced for "unauthorized computer intrusion," or "hacking," into the computer database of his former Portsmouth, New Hampshire employer, Bricsnet US. He was also ordered to pay $13,614.11 in restitution for the damage he caused.

McKenna, who was fired by Bricsnet on Friday, October 20, 2000, hacked into his former employer’s computer server on two occasions. The first time was the evening of Friday, October 20, 2000, the day he was fired. The second was the following morning, Saturday, October 21, 2000. McKenna remotely accessed the computer server of his former employer, via the Internet, without authorization and caused damage in four ways: 1) he deleted approximately 675 computer files; 2) he modified computer user access levels; 3) he altered billing records; and, 4) he transmitted E-mails, which purported to have originated from an authorized representative of the victim corporation, to over one hundred (100) clients. Those E-mails contained false statements about business activities of the corporation.

The charges were brought under the federal computer intrusion laws, Title 18, United States Code, Section 1030, which was first enacted by Congress in 1984, and came after an intensive investigation conducted by agents of the FBI’s elite computer intrusion section. The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Hampshire, in conjunction with the FBI and other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, has recently launched an initiative to combat the escalating problem of unauthorized computer intrusion and intellectual property theft crimes.

McKenna is the first federal criminal defendant in New Hampshire to be convicted of computer hacking and to be sentenced to a federal prison.

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