07/16/2009

News / Miami Man Sentenced in Computer Fraud Offense

Jeffrey H. Sloman, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and Jonathan I. Solomon, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami Field Office, announced that defendant, Lesmany Nunez, 30, was sentenced today by Chief U.S. District Judge Federico A. Moreno to twelve months and one day imprisonment after pleading guilty to computer fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1030(a)(5)(A)(ii). Upon his release from prison, Nunez was ordered to serve three years of supervised release, with a special condition that he perform 100 hours of community service by lecturing young people on the implications of hacking into other people's computers and networks. Nunez was also ordered to pay $31,560 in restitution.

According to the pleadings and in-court statements, Nunez was a former computer support technician at Quantum Technology Partners (QTP), located in Miami-Dade County. QTP provides data storage, email communication and scheduling for their client companies. Late one Friday night, Nunez remotely accessed QTP's network without authorization, using an administrator account and password. After changing the passwords of all of the IT system administrators, Nunez shut down almost all of their servers. Nunez also deleted files which would have made the re-installation of data from backup tapes easier and less time consuming. In so doing, QTP and their clients could not perform their normal business functions for a number of days.

As a result of the unauthorized access to the system and the deletion of data, QTP suffered over $30,000 in damages, which included the cost of responding to the offense, conducting a damage assessment, restoring the data, system and information to its previous condition, and other costs incurred due to the interruption of network services. Nunez was identified as the perpetrator by tracing activity on QTP's computer to Nunez' home network. Additional evidence was subsequently found in a search of Nunez' computer.

Mr. Sloman commended the investigative efforts of the FBI. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Aurora Fagan.

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