Utah Man Charged With Intercepting Employer E-mail

A Salt Lake City man faces up to 15 years in prison for allegedly intercepting the e-mail of two of his former bosses, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said.

William K. Dobson, 55, is charged with surreptitiously accessing the e-mail system of a Utah technology firm after he left the company. He has been indicted on two counts of intercepting electronic communications and one count of illegally obtaining information from a protected computer, the DoJ announced late Wednesday. The Justice Department did not release the name of Dobson’s former employer.

After Dobson left the company over business and financial disagreements, he accessed the company’s e-mail system twice to program it to send e-mail to an unauthorized inbox he created on the company’s system, the DoJ said. Dobson allegedly routed the e-mail of the company’s chief executive officer and its vice president of engineering to this inbox.

He programmed his home computer to download the e-mail for longer than a month, until the U.S. FBI searched his home in connection with the investigation, the DoJ said.

Dobson allegedly read many of the e-mail messages, containing both business and personal information, the DoJ said.

If convicted, Dobson faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, a fine of up to US $250,000 and restitution to the victims.

-Grant Gross, IDG News Service (Washington Bureau)

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