IT guy whose job was to stop ex-staff running amok on the network is jailed for running amok on the network

2020-09-25 23:22

Shannon Stafford, 50, was sent down for 12 months and a day by US federal district Judge Catherine Blake on Thursday.

Following a four-day trial in Maryland, a jury in November found Stafford, of Crofton, Maryland, guilty of intentional damage to a computer and attempted intentional damage to a computer.

The case stems from the 2015 dismissal of Stafford at an unnamed business described by the Feds only as "a global company with thousands of employees and offices around the world." After a decade of working in tech support at the organization's Washington DC office, he was promoted in 2014 to an IT management role: specifically, technical site lead. By March 2015 he was demoted back to the helpdesk for poor performance, and eventually fired that August.

On the day he was terminated, Stafford didn't return his work-issued MacBook Pro, went home, and that evening used the laptop and his home internet connection to repeatedly attempt to log into the company's network using his credentials and those of a former colleague.

A couple of days passed and the company warned Stafford to knock it off and leave the biz alone.

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