IT Administrator Sentenced for Sabotaging Employer

Lockdown hasn’t ended for one vengeful IT professional who carried out a cyber-attack against his former employer. 

Levi Delgado, of Middletown, Delaware, was sentenced on Wednesday to home confinement after hacking into a company’s computer network, deleting its data and disabling user accounts.

The 36-year-old cyber-criminal had been employed as an information technology administrator at a medical center that provides care to under-served communities, but the medical center terminated Delgado’s employment in August 2017. 

After losing his job, Delgado’s access to the medical center’s computer network was revoked and the credentials that had allowed him to log in to it were disabled.  

Four days after his termination, Delgado hooked up a personal laptop and accessed the medical center’s computer network without authorization via an administrator account.

After illegally entering the network, Delgado deleted the medical center’s employee user accounts, disabled its computer accounts, and also deleted its file server.  

Delgado’s criminal actions prevented the medical center’s employees from logging in to their computers and blocked them from accessing patient files necessary to conduct operations. 

While no patient personal health information was compromised or accessed, patient appointments and treatments had to be rescheduled because of Delgado’s cyber-sabotage. 

Delgado pled guilty in February 2021 to one count of causing damage to a protected computer. 

Yesterday, Leonard Stark, chief United States district judge for the district of Delaware, sentenced Delgado to six months of home confinement and ordered him to pay over $13,000 in restitution.

The case was investigated by the FBI-Baltimore Division’s Cyber Task Force and was prosecuted by Assistant US Attorney Jesse Wenger.

“What Mr. Delgado did was not only intentional, reckless and petty, but also caused a severe disruption in medical care in an underserved community,” said Rachel Byrd, acting special agent in charge of the FBI-Baltimore Field Office. 

“Computer intrusion is a crime and the FBI, and our law enforcement partners, will continue to pursue those who compromise, mishandle or disrupt computer networks.”

Weiss added that their office “is committed to prosecuting any individual who thinks attacking a former employer’s computer network is an acceptable reaction to getting fired.”