Ex-GTE Employee Pleads Guilty to Intentionally Damaging Protected
GTE Computers
TAMPA -- The United States Attorney announced today that MICHAEL WHITT VENTIMIGLIA
entered a guilty plea to a one count felony information this morning before
Magistrate Judge Thomas B. McCoun.
The information charges Ventimiglia, age 32 and living in Bradenton, Florida,
with one count of intentionally damaging protected computers, in violation
of 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5)(A).
The facts, as agreed to by the defendant in his plea agreement with the United
States, establish that in the early morning hours of May 15, 2000, while an
employee of GTE, Ventimiglia entered his place of employment, the GTE Network
Service Support Center (NSSC) located in Tampa, Florida, and entered certain
commands into three different multi-state GTE network computers used in interstate
commerce and communication. These commands caused the computers to delete
electronic information stored on their hard disk drives and prohibited anyone
from interfering with this destruction of data. The damage amounted to a cost
to GTE of at least $209,000.
The prosecution of this offense constitutes one of a growing number of prosecutions
under this statute nation-wide aimed at protecting, among other things, computers
used in interstate commerce or communications.
The sentencing of Mr. Ventimiglia will be scheduled later before District
Judge Richard A. Lazzara in Tampa. The maximum statutory penalty for the offense
is five years imprisonment and a fine up to $250,000. However, the actual
sentence will be dictated by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines which take
into account a number of factors and will be imposed in the discretion of
the Court.
This case was investigated by Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Donald L. Hansen,
Computer Technology Crimes Coordinator for the Tampa Division of the United
States Attorney's Office.
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