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Press Release For Immediate Release July 24, 2001	U.S. Department of Justice United States Attorney District of Maryland Stephen M. Schenning Northern Division United States Courthouse 101 West Lombard Street Baltimore, MD 21201-2692 410-209-4800 TTY/TDD:410-962-4462 FAX 410-962-0693

 

Lusby, Maryland Man Pleads Guilty to Sabotaging IRS Computers

Greenbelt - United States Attorney Stephen M. Schenning and Special Agents in Charge William J. Benton and Deborah L. Mantick, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration announced today that Claude R. Carpenter, II, 19, of the 700 block of Sandy Wash Circle in Lusby, Maryland, pleaded guilty to intentionally causing damage to a protected computer. Carpenter faces a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000. U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow has scheduled sentencing for September 24, 2001 at 9:30 am.

According to the Statement of Facts presented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stuart A. Berman and Department of Justice Trial Attorney Michael O’Leary, on March 13, 2000, Claude Carpenter began work as a systems administrator for Network Resources, a subcontractor to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), performing work on the Integrated Network Operations Management System (INOMS) database, which is the inventory system for all hardware and software within the IRS. His responsibilities included monitoring three computer servers maintained at the IRS’s computer center at the New Carrollton Federal Building in Lanham. Within a brief time, Carpenter was admonished for inappropriate action and comments, for repeatedly arriving at work late, leaving before the end of his shift and not being available for system responses and customer requests. His supervisor discussed these issues with him on April 3, 2000. Carpenter had two other meetings in April with supervisors where he was advised that any further problems with attitude or timeliness would be grounds for dismissal. Carpenter continued to be late for work and on May 4th his root access, the level of complete control over a computer system utilized by system administrators, was limited by management to work performed directly on one server, not the other two servers or any remote work. On May 18th, following a dispute between Carpenter and a co-worker, Carpenter’s supervisor prepared and sent to the project manager a draft letter of dismissal for Carpenter. Carpenter’s supervisor did not print out the letter or give it to Carpenter.

According to the Statement of Facts, on May 18th - 19th, Carpenter was assigned to work a shift from 2:00 pm to 12:30 am. During that shift, he logged into one of the servers to which he had no right to possess root access and proceeded to access his supervisor’s computer profile, modifying the profile and inserting several lines of destructive computer code. Carpenter then "commented out" the code in his supervisor’s profile so that it would not execute, but subsequently Carpenter inserted the same lines of active destructive code onto all three servers, so that once it executed, it would wipe out all of the data on all three servers. Carpenter then tried to conceal his activities by turning off system logs, removing history files and seeking to have the destructive code overwritten after execution to make it impossible for system administrators to determine why the data was deleted. The next day Carpenter was dismissed, after describing to the project manager the draft dismissal letter which was located on his supervisor’s computer. During the following two weeks Carpenter called the system administrator room several times to ask if "everything was ok," "if the machines were running ok," or "if anything as wrong with the servers." After Carpenter’s activities were discovered, IRS and the project managers shut down the three computer servers in order to remove the destructive code and reestablish the security and integrity of the system.

Also according to the Statement of Facts, Carpenter submitted a Standard From 85P (Questionnaire for Public Trust Positions) in connection with his application to work for the IRS subcontractor. It was later discovered that Carpenter lied about his previous work history, criminal history and use of illegal drugs on the Standard Form 85P.

Carpenter will be sentenced under the United States Sentencing Guidelines following a hearing at which Judge Chasanow will determine the amount of loss caused by Carpenter’s conduct and other sentencing issues. Under the Sentencing Guidelines, Carpenter faces a mandatory minimum sentence of six months imprisonment. Under the plea agreement, the government will be asking Judge Chasanow to impose a sentence of at least 18 months.

This case was investigated by the Office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stuart A. Berman and Michael O’Leary, a trial attorney with the Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice.

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