Disgruntled former employee pleads guilty to trashing credit union’s computers
The defendant destroyed more than 20 gigabytes of data, including financial records, in retaliation for being fired
On Tuesday, Juliana Barile pleaded guilty in Brooklyn Federal Court to one count of computer intrusion after she intruded into a credit union’s website and destroyed valuable data on the site after she was terminated as an employee of the credit union.
The guilty plea took place before United States District Judge Eric N. Vitaliano. When sentenced, Barile faces up to 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine.
Barile was fired from her position as a part-time employee with the unnamed credit union on May 19, 2021, according to court documents. Two days later, on May 21, she remotely accessed the credit union’s file server and deleted more than 20,000 files and almost 3,500 directories, totaling approximately 21.3 gigabytes of data. The deleted data included files related to mortgage loan applications and the credit union’s anti-ransomware protection software. Barile also opened confidential files. After she accessed the computer server without authorization and destroyed files, Barile sent text messages to a friend explaining that “I deleted their shared network documents,” referring to the credit union’s share drive.