Miklos Daniel Brody Retaliated Against His Former Employer, a Bank, by
Damaging the Bank’s Cloud System and Stealing Valuable Computer Code
SAN FRANCISCO – Miklos Daniel Brody was sentenced to 24 months in prison today
for a network intrusion and for making false statements to a government
agency, announced United States Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey and United States
Secret Service (USSS) Special Agent in Charge Shawn M. Bradstreet. The
sentence was handed down by the Hon. William. H. Orrick, Senior United States
District Judge.
Brody, 38, of San Francisco, pleaded guilty in April 2023 to two charges that
he violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—by obtaining information from a
protected computer, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C) and (c)(2)(B),
and by intentionally damaging a protected computer, in violation of 18 U.S.C.
§ 1030(a)(5)(A) and (c)(4)(B)(i)—and one charge of making false statements to
a government agency, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2).
According to a superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury in
December 2022, Brody worked as a cloud engineer for a bank headquartered in
San Francisco until March 11, 2020, when he was fired for violating company
policy.
The superseding indictment alleges that, later that evening, and continuing
into the following morning, Brody used his company-issued laptop—which he
failed to return upon being fired—to access the bank’s computer network
without authorization and to cause substantial damage. Among other things,
Brody deleted the bank’s code repositories, ran a malicious script to delete
logs, left taunts within the bank’s code for former colleagues, and
impersonated other bank employees by opening sessions in their names. He also
emailed himself proprietary bank code that he had worked on as an employee,
which was valued at over $5,000. At the sentencing hearing, Judge Orrick
determined the total cost of the damage to the bank’s systems to be at least
$220,621.22.
The superseding indictment also alleges that, in the days and weeks that
followed his firing, Brody engaged in a series of evasive and deceptive
actions, including filing a police report in which he falsely told the San
Francisco Police Department that his company-issued laptop had been stolen
from his car while he was working out at the gym. Brody doubled down on that
false allegation in statements he made to USSS agents during an interview
following his arrest in March 2021. In his guilty plea application, Brody
admitted he made a false statement about the company-issued laptop and that he
knew his statement was false at the time.
In addition to sentencing Brody to prison, Judge Orrick ordered him to pay
restitution totaling $529,266.37 and to serve three years of supervised
release to begin after his prison term is completed.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Lauren M. Harding and George O. Hageman are
prosecuting the case, with assistance from Paralegal Specialist Mark DiCenzo.
The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the U.S. Secret Service.
Further Information:
Case #: 3:22-CR-00168 WHO
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California