A man fired from a McMinnville-based digital marketing company was sentenced Wednesday to a year and a day in federal prison for launching a cyberattack against his former employer.
Kristopher Ives began working for Gearbox Studios in March 2010 as a computer programmer and later as its lead programmer for server architecture and support, according to court records. The website development and hosting company targets the online toy retail market.
After Ives was fired on Feb. 9, 2015, for poor productivity and unreliability, he then deleted data from 177 of about 200 customer websites across the country, drastically reduced the price of customer products down to $1 or $2 and stole a credit card database that he had saved, prosecutors said.
In addition to deleting nearly 20,000 products from the customer websites, he stole names and credit card numbers from the websites and threatened to release the information unless Gearbox made payment to a bitcoin address, prosecutors said. Gearbox never made a payment and Ives didn’t release the credit card information, according to prosecutors.
The fraud occurred between February and May 2015, according to court records.
His bosses were concerned that Ives might retaliate based on “socially aggressive and irritable behavior’’ he had demonstrated in the past with employees and customers, so they held off firing him months earlier before the Christmas holidays and spent the extra time trying to strengthen their computer network’s security, according to FBI agent Stephen Roberts.
After Ives’ firing, the company also told investigators that they were aware Ives had been the subject of an OregonLive article in April 2015: “Oregon man to Obama: ‘Please come to arrest me’ for sending Edward Snowden bitcoin.’’ He had publicly taunted then-President Barak Obama on the Reddit social media site after openly defying an executive order that appeared to prohibit Americans from supplying cyber-currency to Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who walked off with classified files in 2013 and leaked them to journalists. Snowden fled to Moscow, where he was granted temporary asylum.
“Defendant used sophisticated methods to attack his former employer. He also used his experience at the company to exploit weaknesses in their system. Defendant caused thousands of dollars of damage,’’ prosecutor Quinn P. Harrington wrote in a sentencing memo. Gearbox’s loss was tentatively estimated at $12,300. A restitution hearing will be scheduled within 90 days.
Harrington said Ives’ fraud was “more than a moment where he made a mistake,’’ but spanned months of “repeated activity.’’
Ives said he was sorry he caused his former employer so much trouble. “I’m looking to put this all behind me, and I accept full responsibility,’’ he said.
U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon ordered Ives be placed on three years of supervised release after his prison term. He must undergo mental health treatment and must submit to computer monitoring and a search of his computers if a probation officer develops reasonable suspicion he’s violated any terms of his supervision, the judge ordered.
-- Maxine Bernstein
Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian
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