Man gets prison for sabotage that caused PPE delivery delay

ATLANTA — A former vice president of a medical device packaging company has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for sabotaging his former employer’s electronic shipping records, which prosecutors said delayed the delivery of personal protective equipment to health care providers.

Christopher Dobbins, 41, received his last paycheck from Stradis Healthcare on March 26, and three days later used a fake user account he had created while working there to access the company’s computer systems, prosecutors in Atlanta said. He then created a second fake user account and used that to edit 115,581 records and delete 2,371 records before deactivating both fake accounts and logging out, prosecutors said.

That caused delays of 24 to 72 hours in shipments of personal protective equipment that the company would normally be able to deliver on the same day, according to court filings. The company packages and distributes protective equipment including masks, gloves and gowns.

“As businesses worked to get PPE into the hands of those most in need of it, Dobbins chose to hack his former employer and maliciously interrupt that process,” U.S. Attorney Byung J. “Bjay” Pak said in an emailed statement Tuesday. “His actions caused delays in the delivery of desperately needed equipment in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.”

Dobbins, who lives in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth, was sentenced to serve a year and a day in federal prison and ordered to pay restitution of $ 221,200. He had pleaded guilty in July to a charge of reckless damage to a protected computer.