this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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[–] MTK 225 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Up to 10 years is crazy. Sure, what he did was wrong, planned and malicious, and they claim it cost them tens of thousands of dollars. But 10 years? This is crazy for something that at worst would be a yearly salary of a single employee.

Fucking capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 59 minutes ago)

Don't F with the power grid.

owned by the Ohio- and Dublin-based power management company Eaton Corp.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaton_Corporation

Sentences are always harsh for anything to do with those who provide for public utilities.

@[email protected] has a comment about sabotage, which was likely a factor combined with this to drive max recommended sentencing.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Now to make it worse, ask this, "If the corporation did 10 times this amount of damage, but to the general citizens of the country, how many people would go to jail?"

That's right 0 people would go to jail! And they would only be fined for no more than 10% of the profit they made while doing it. Maybe someone like a jr director of operations gets tossed in jail, but he wasnt really apart of the club.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 22 hours ago

"Up to 10 years" is the maximum possible for that type of crime. Actual sentencing guidelines for a $500k loss for a first time offender will probably come out to about 2, maybe 3 years.

In order for the recommended sentence to hit 10 years, we'd have to be talking about damage of over $550 million, or something like a long criminal history.

Substantial disruption of critical infrastructure would get someone to around 5 years, as a reference.

[–] aquinteros 4 points 14 hours ago

he should have tried to overthrow the government, or stole classified documents. that's a drastically lower sentence

[–] [email protected] 7 points 18 hours ago

nothing he did was wrong.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

allegedly costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.

Also it's sabotage, which might attract heavier penalties than mere theft?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Actually for federal sentencing, property destruction is punished under the same table as theft. It's mostly measured from the amount of loss to the victims, whether the person actually profited from it or not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago

Fair enough.

Having known victims of vandalism I can say it hurts more than theft.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

"allegedly costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses." It seems he was already messing with the systems while he was still working there. This is not a case of malicious compliance or they fired the only guy who knew how something worked. He was actively sabotaging the company's network.

"he apparently became disgruntled by a corporate "realignment" in 2018 that "reduced his responsibilities,"" So it's not even like the company was being evil as they fired him while he was on PTO to take care of his daughter with leukaemia (or something). He would've been better off finding a new job if he was unhappy. Instead he made things far worse.

But 10 years is way too high. Especially for a victimless crime with alleged "values" of loss. But otherwise he gets no sympathy from me.