Greenbelt - United States Attorney Stephen M. Schenning and Special Agents in
Charge William J. Benton and Deborah L. Mantick, Treasury Inspector General for
Tax Administration announced today that Claude R. Carpenter, II, 19, of the 700
block of Sandy Wash Circle in Lusby, Maryland, pleaded guilty to intentionally
causing damage to a protected computer. Carpenter faces a maximum penalty of 10
years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000. U.S. District Judge Deborah K.
Chasanow has scheduled sentencing for September 24, 2001 at 9:30
am.
According to the Statement of Facts presented by Assistant U.S.
Attorney Stuart A. Berman and Department of Justice Trial Attorney Michael
O’Leary, on March 13, 2000, Claude Carpenter began work as a systems
administrator for Network Resources, a subcontractor to the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS), performing work on the Integrated Network Operations Management
System (INOMS) database, which is the inventory system for all hardware and
software within the IRS. His responsibilities included monitoring three computer
servers maintained at the IRS’s computer center at the New Carrollton Federal
Building in Lanham. Within a brief time, Carpenter was admonished for
inappropriate action and comments, for repeatedly arriving at work late, leaving
before the end of his shift and not being available for system responses and
customer requests. His supervisor discussed these issues with him on April 3,
2000. Carpenter had two other meetings in April with supervisors where he was
advised that any further problems with attitude or timeliness would be grounds
for dismissal. Carpenter continued to be late for work and on May 4th his root
access, the level of complete control over a computer system utilized by system
administrators, was limited by management to work performed directly on one
server, not the other two servers or any remote work. On May 18th, following a
dispute between Carpenter and a co-worker, Carpenter’s supervisor prepared and
sent to the project manager a draft letter of dismissal for Carpenter.
Carpenter’s supervisor did not print out the letter or give it to
Carpenter.
According to the Statement of Facts, on May 18th - 19th,
Carpenter was assigned to work a shift from 2:00 pm to 12:30 am. During that
shift, he logged into one of the servers to which he had no right to possess
root access and proceeded to access his supervisor’s computer profile, modifying
the profile and inserting several lines of destructive computer code. Carpenter
then "commented out" the code in his supervisor’s profile so that it would not
execute, but subsequently Carpenter inserted the same lines of active
destructive code onto all three servers, so that once it executed, it would wipe
out all of the data on all three servers. Carpenter then tried to conceal his
activities by turning off system logs, removing history files and seeking to
have the destructive code overwritten after execution to make it impossible for
system administrators to determine why the data was deleted. The next day
Carpenter was dismissed, after describing to the project manager the draft
dismissal letter which was located on his supervisor’s computer. During the
following two weeks Carpenter called the system administrator room several times
to ask if "everything was ok," "if the machines were running ok," or "if
anything as wrong with the servers." After Carpenter’s activities were
discovered, IRS and the project managers shut down the three computer servers in
order to remove the destructive code and reestablish the security and integrity
of the system.
Also according to the Statement of Facts, Carpenter
submitted a Standard From 85P (Questionnaire for Public Trust Positions) in
connection with his application to work for the IRS subcontractor. It was later
discovered that Carpenter lied about his previous work history, criminal history
and use of illegal drugs on the Standard Form 85P.
Carpenter will be
sentenced under the United States Sentencing Guidelines following a hearing at
which Judge Chasanow will determine the amount of loss caused by Carpenter’s
conduct and other sentencing issues. Under the Sentencing Guidelines, Carpenter
faces a mandatory minimum sentence of six months imprisonment. Under the plea
agreement, the government will be asking Judge Chasanow to impose a sentence of
at least 18 months.
This case was investigated by the Office of the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and is being prosecuted by
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stuart A. Berman and Michael O’Leary, a trial attorney
with the Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal
Division, U.S. Department of Justice. |
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