CEO sentenced for trashing client's Web site
The CEO of a Seattle-area consulting company was sentenced to three months of home confinement Thursday for destroying a client's Web site following a contract dispute.
Minecode CEO Pradyumna Samal will also serve 288 hours of community service and three years of probation, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday. A project manager with the company, Sandeep Verma, got a one-year probation sentence and was ordered to perform 40 hours of community service.
Minecode, of Bellevue, Washington, had built the online gift shop for wine retailer Vinado, but things soured in late 2006. According to the Department of Justice, things got so bad between the two companies that Samal ordered Verma to disable Vinado's online gift shop. The next month Samal "caused commands to be transmitted to Vinado's Web site that resulted in the deletion of Vinado's Web site, e-mail server and database in its entirety," the DoJ said.
Samal and Verma pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of computer intrusion. The two men had been facing prison time. They were sentenced by U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Theiler in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, in Seattle.
Minecode has agreed to pay Vinado US$120,000 for damages associated with the incident, and was fined a further $144,000, the DoJ said.
Vinado went out of business and its owners lost their home following the incident, the DoJ said, citing a victim impact statement by Vinado partner Seth Micarelli. “This crime devastated and destroyed our company and all of the participants," he said. "An online store holding thousands of customer records simply cannot survive its complete destruction and the violation of those customer records. We did what we could afterwards to salvage it, but this act was a fatal blow to Vinado.”
The Vinado Web site is still online but is no longer in working order.
Founded in 2001 by Samal, a former Microsoft program manager, Minecode works with businesses and governments worldwide.
IDG News Service
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backup?
Vinado has to take some responsibility for apparently not having backup of customer records(?).If those were intact it should be a small problem to get the business back on its feet. It's not like e-commerce systems are expensive or difficult to implement these days.
inappropriate
backup? That logic is flawed. As the primary vendor, Minecode would have had knowledge and access to Vinado's backup architecture too. They probably just forgot it on the first attack.There's no excuse for invading a client's property and destroying their livelihood. Vengeance was not an appropriate response. They should have sued.
I know PK samal personally.
I know PK samal personally. He was never a IT person in the first place..He was a librarian in TCS Gurgaon office..he came to US first time in 2000 and stayed in renton plum-tree park apartments. He came here through one fraudulent IT body shopping company saying he has experience on java, oracle and e-commerce. Initially he was work less although on the payroll of his company..this is to keep his visa status. After few months his company assigned him to another company in renton area for work. In 2001 I think he lost his job..then he started a company called syntegral.net when he was still in that apartment. My friends had already advised me against mixing with him too much as he was a known cheat in TCS,Delhi.Now FBI should investigate against him in full detail..I am pretty sure he must have bankrolled many small companies.. lying them that the can take care of their business and then defrauding them or demanding them more money later..