News Notes: Computer Tampering Lands Employee In Jail

A systems administrator has been ordered to serve one year in jail for destroying computer files worth $237,550 at Digital Link, a Sunnyvale engineering firm. An Chi Tran quit his job after his supervisor gave him a written reprimand. The company then changed its passwords to block his access to its central computer system. But Tran still managed to break in and write a program that erased many of the company’s files. Under California law, Tran could have received up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine for his sabotage.4 In another case, Adelyn Lee, a former employee of Oracle Corp., was recently sentenced to a year in jail for creating phony e-mail evidence to aid her sexual harassment lawsuit against the company’s CEO.