IT Pro Gets Prison Time For Sabotaging Ex-Employer's System 265
itwbennett writes: "In June 2012, Ricky Joe Mitchell of Charleston, West Virginia, found out he was going to be fired from oil and gas company EnerVest and in response he decided to reset the company's servers to their original factory settings. He also disabled cooling equipment for EnerVest's systems and disabled a data-replication process. After pleading guilty in January, Mitchell has been sentenced to four years in federal prison."
He turned job termination into career termination (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ashamed! (Score:5, Informative)
He ruins our IT/Ops names...
He doesn't deserve the term "Pro"
Right. "Pros" don't get caught!
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Duh... (Score:2, Informative)
It's the famous Dont Talk to Police video by James Duane and that other guy.
It's an interesting video, but would it have hurt to say which video it was? I suspect most people here have already seen it.
Re:He's lucky (Score:4, Informative)
He did. He "hacked in to a protected computer". Also:
"Mitchell is no stranger to computer-related controversy. In high school, he was accused of planting more than 100 viruses on the school's systems, according to a report in the Charleston Gazette newspaper."
Great choice, let's hire him!
Re:Ashamed! (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, between the equal protection clause of the 4th amendment and the cruel and unusual clause of the 8th, it isn't difficult to argue that it does, in fact, mean just that.
Amen to that. If you have two sets of crimes ones committed by the fabulously wealthy (Wall Streeters, bankers - non one else is in the position to carry out such fraud) which do vast damage, and ones that are committed by ordinary citizens that do comparatively trivial amounts of damage, and that latter set are prosecuted far more vigorously, with much harsher punishments than the former, then we do not truly have a system of laws any longer, we have a system of (very rich) men.
One is reminded of this: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." - Anatole France
Re:Ashamed! (Score:2, Informative)
Do you even have to look as far as wall streeters to find inequal punishment in the US?
I turn on the TV every other week to see some US celebrity or another has gotten high on crack or heroin and smashed their luxury sports car through the front of somebodies house or something and gotten community service or 30 days.
Had it been some urban black kid it would have been 5 years hard time.
What is it about being a celebrity in the US that entitles you to break the law with reckless abandon?