In today’s installment of The Threat Among Us, a consultant copies his employer’s data and then allegedly sells it to another business, despite having a confidentiality agreement in place.
The FBI reports that on April 8, 2015, members of the Jackson FBI’s Cyber Task Force arrested Thomas A. Wotring, age 28. The arrest was made pursuant to an indictment and arrest warrant issued by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.
According to the indictment, Wotring accessed a protected computer on or about July 11, 2012, without authorization, and thereby obtained information for purposes of commercial advantage and private financial gain, in violation of Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1030(a)(2) and (c)(2)(B).
Wotring made an initial appearance before United States Magistrate Judge Robert H. Walker on April 9, 2015. He was released on a $25,000 bond, pending trial of this matter, which is scheduled for May 11, 2015 in Gulfport, Mississippi.
The computer-fraud case appears similar to a civil lawsuit filed against Wotring in federal court Aug. 21, 2012, by SND Holdings LLC of New Mexico and AM Community Net Inc. of Georgia.
AM Computing had hired Wotring as a consultant in 2011 to handle credit-card processing services, which gave him access to customer information for both businesses, according to the lawsuit.
The firm fired him in June 2012, and he received a $2,500 severance pay for signing a confidentiality agreement.
On July 11, 2012, an AM employee noticed an export request for data and realized someone had downloaded the businesses’ database of customer transactions.
Read more about what happened next on Sun Herald.