News
Former Sys Admin Gets 8 Years for Computer Sabotage
A former UBS PaineWebber systems administrator was sentenced Wednesday to eight years and one month in prison for attempting to profit by detonating a "logic bomb" program that prosecutors said caused millions of dollars in damage to the brokerage's computer network in 2002.
Roger Duronio also was ordered to pay $3.1 million in restitution to his former employer, now known as UBS Financial Services Inc., part of the Swiss banking company UBS AG.
Duronio, 64, of Bogota was put under house arrest by U.S. District Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. until he is assigned to a prison. He had been free on $1 million bond.
The term was the maximum under sentencing guidelines, which pleased U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie.
"This was a fitting, appropriately long sentence," Christie said. "Duronio acted out of misplaced vengeance and greed. He sought to do financial harm to a company and to profit from that, but he failed on both counts."
A message left for Duronio's lawyer, Christopher D. Adams, was not immediately returned.
A federal jury in July convicted Duronio on one count of securities fraud and one count of computer fraud, and acquitted him on two counts of mail fraud.
Prosecutors presented evidence that Duronio was angry with the company, where he had worked for nearly two years in Weehawken, because he expected an annual bonus of $50,000 but got $32,500.
Evidence showed Duronio ultimately lost $23,000 he invested in a stock market bet against UBS because the ploy failed to reduce the company's share price.
Duronio planted the logic bomb in some 1,000 of PaineWebber's approximately 1,500 networked computers in branch offices around the country and resigned from the company Feb. 22, 2002, prosecutors said.
That day, Duronio went to a broker and bought what are called "put options" for UBS stock, prosecutors said. Those give the purchaser the right to sell shares for a fixed per-share price, so the lower a stock falls the more valuable the option becomes.
Duronio placed his last trade on March 1, 2002, and the logic bomb attack took place three days later, deleting files on 1,000 computers, prosecutors said.