NEW JERSEY
A federal judge today sentenced a former software company technician to two years and six months in prison for sending damaging computer code to the servers of his former employee that resulted in $5,000 in damages, according to officials.
The malicious computer code destroyed intellectual property, officials said.
Nikhil Nilesh Shah, a Union, New Jersey, plead guilty to one count of causing the transmission of computer code.
U.S. District Judge Louise W. Flanagan of North Carolina, also ordered Shah, 33, to pay $324,462 in restitution.
According to the plea agreement, from 2007 to 2012, Shah was an information technology manager at Smart Online Inc., a company located in Durham, North Carolina, that developed platforms for the creation of mobile applications.
Shah admitted that in March 2012, he left Smart Online to work for another technology company. On June 28, 2012, he sent malicious computer code to Smart Online’s computer servers in Durham and Raleigh, North Carolina, deleting much of Smart Online’s intellectual property.
The FBI’s Raleigh Office investigated the case.