Ex-IT Worker Gets 2.25 Years For Clinic Hack

A 29-year-old Texas man was sentenced to 27 months in prison Wednesday for hacking into the servers of a medical clinic where he lost his information technology job and buying merchandise from Staples on the clinic’s dime, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Brandon Coughlin, who pled guilty to wire fraud and damaging a protected computer in June, had hacked and damaged 13 of Centerville Clinic Inc.’s servers after the health care facility asked him to resign. In all he caused about $60,000 worth of damage, according to the DOJ, which brought the case in Pennsylvania federal court.

“He disabled all administrative accounts needed to control any and all of the computer servers of CCI, and deleted users’ network shares, business data, and patient health information and data, including patient medical records,” the DOJ said in a release.

Coughlin was hired as an in-house computer systems administrator by the clinic in January 2013. Less than three weeks later he was asked to resign, according to the DOJ.

In September 2013, using passwords he knew from his time on the job, he accessed the system, blocked other administrators, bought iPad Air tablets through the clinic’s Staples account, and to cover his tracks deleted the receipt emails that were directed to the purchasing supervisor, the DOJ said.

Until the systems were back up and running, the clinic ceased medical treatment of its patients, the DOJ said.