A 53-year-old Tracy resident has been sentenced to six months of home confinement and 36 months of probation for intentionally causing damage to the computer network for the Discovery Bay Water Treatment Facility.
OAKLAND – Rambler Gallo, 53, of Tracy, was a full-time employee of a private Massachusetts-based company that contracted with Discovery Bay to operate the town’s wastewater treatment facility. The facility provides treatment for the water and wastewater systems for the town’s 15,000 residents.
According to his plea agreement, while Gallo was employed with the company, he installed software into his own personal computer and into the company’s private internal network that allowed Gallo to gain remote access to Discovery Bay’s Water Treatment facility computer network.
Gallo resigned from his employment on November 25, 2020, but approximately five weeks later, he accessed the facility’s computer system remotely and transmitted a command to uninstall certain software that was designed to perform as the main hub of the facility’s computer network.
The software that Gallo accessed protected the entire water treatment system, including water pressure, filtration, and chemical levels. The government argued that Gallo’s actions “were well thought out to be as disruptive as possible” and “caused a potential threat to the health and safety of the community’s water supply.”
U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. handed down the sentence on Wednesday, also ordering Gallo to forfeit his computer and pay $44,250 in restitution. The case was investigated by the FBI, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Cynthia Frey is prosecuting.
Gallo was charged with one felony count of transmitting a program, information, code, and command to cause damage to a protected computer, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(5)(A) and (c)(4)(B)(i). He pleaded guilty to the charge.
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Key Facts
- State: California
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Cybercrime
- Source: Official Source ↗
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