Defense Department insider guilty of computer fraud

Former DoD civilian employee and former member of the California Army National Guard, Jesse Lane Jr today pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States and conspiring with four other individuals to do the same, by accessing a government computer to set up thousands of dollars in fraudulent payments, according to a statement from Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the US Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. Jesse Lane Jr. pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles to one count of conspiracy and one count of honest services wire fraud. As part of his plea, Lane admitted that he and his co-conspirators were members of the 223rd Finance Detachment, a unit of the California National Guard that processes pay for Army National Guard members, and were deployed together to Iraq and Kuwait from March 2004 until February 2005, when they returned to their home drilling post in Compton, Calif. Beginning in March 2005, and continuing through August 2005, Lane accessed a DOD pay-processing computer system and inputted thousands of dollars in unauthorized DOD pay and entitlements for himself and his co-conspirators. In return, Lane’s co-conspirators kicked back about $150,000 of the money they received to Lane.  In November, 2006, Lane’s California-based co-conspirators Jennifer Anjakos, Lomeli Chavez, and Derryl Hollier and Luis Lopez each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud on related charges.  Lane faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison for conspiracy, 20 years in prison for honest services wire fraud, and three years of supervised release. Sentencing was set for Sept. 24, 2007. This news further backs up the contention that insiders are a far worse threat to companies and/or government agencies than most outside threats. You may recall the study aid one in three of IT employees snoop  through company systems and peek at confidential information such as private files, wage data, personal emails, and HR background.   As if that weren’t bad enough, the survey found that more than one-third of IT professionals admit they could still access their company’s network once they’d left their current job, with no one to stop them.  More than 200 IT professionals participated in the survey with many revealing that although it wasn’t corporate policy to allow IT workers to access systems after termination, still almost 25% of respondents knew of another IT staff member who still had access to sensitive networks even though they’d left the company long ago.