Former Citibank Employee Sentenced to 21 Months in Federal Prison for Causing Intentional Damage to a Protected Computer

DALLAS — A Dallas man who worked at Citibank Regents Campus in Irving, Texas, in 2012 and 2013, Lennon Ray Brown, and who admitted causing damage to a protected Citibank computer, was sentenced today by U.S. District C. Godbey to 21 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $77,200 in restitution, announced U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas.

Brown, 38, who worked for Citibank first as a contract employee and then, beginning in February 2013 as a full-time employee, pleaded guilty in February 2016 to an indictment charging one count of intentional damage to a protected computer.  According to documents filed in his case, on December 23, 2013, after having a discussion with his supervisor earlier in the day about his work performance, Brown caused the transmission of a program, information, code and command, causing damage without authorization to a protected computer.

Specifically, at approximately 6:03 p.m. that evening, Brown knowingly transmitted a code and command to 10 core Citibank Global Control Center routers, and by transmitting that code, erased the running configuration files in nine of the routers, resulting in a loss of connectivity to approximately 90% of all Citibank networks across North America.  At 6:05 p.m. that evening, Brown scanned his employee identification badge to exit the Citibank Regents Campus.

At today’s sentencing hearing, where the Court referred to Brown’s conduct as “criminal vandalism,” the government read a text that Brown sent to a coworker shortly after he shut down Citibank’s system that read, “They was firing me. I just beat them to it. Nothing personal, the upper management need to see what they guys on the floor is capable of doing when they keep getting mistreated. I took one for the team. Sorry if I made my peers look bad, but sometimes it take something like what I did to wake the upper management up.”

The case was investigated by the U.S. Secret Service.  Assistant U.S. Attorney C.S. Heath was in charge of the prosecution.

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