DULUTH, Ga. — A Duluth man will spend a year and a day in prison after trying to sabotage a medical packaging company that had just fired him, disrupting PPE shipments at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in the process.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia, 41-year-old Christopher Dobbins was terminated from the company in March and, three days after getting his final paycheck, "used a fake user account that he had previously created wile still employed at the company to log into the company's computer systems."
Once inside the company's systems, the U.S. Attorney's Office said Dobbins edited more than 115,000 records and deleted more than 2,000.
"The edits and deletions to the company's records disrupted the company's shipping processes, causing delays in the delivery of much-needed PPEs to healthcare providers," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Dobbins was ordered to pay $221,200 in restitution. The U.S. Attorney's Office did not name what company he had been employed at.
“As businesses worked to get PPE into the hands of those most in need of it, Dobbins chose to hack his former employer and maliciously interrupt that process,” U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak said in a statement. “His actions caused delays in the delivery of desperately needed equipment in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.”
The FBI Atlanta office's special agent in charge, Chris Hacker, said Dobbins had "disrupted the distribution of critical medical supplies to health care workers on the front lines of the battle" and that "this swift and efficient result sends a message that anyone who puts the lives of American citizens at risk will be pursued and punished for their egregious behavior."