Raytheon techie who took home radar secrets gets 18 months in the clink in surprise time fraud probe twist
- Reference: 1595585768
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/07/24/raytheon_techie_jailed/
- Source link:
Ahmedelhadi Yassin Serageldin, 66, was [1]sentenced [PDF] in a Massachusetts federal district court earlier this week. Back in January, he pleaded guilty to one count of willfully retaining national defense information.
His [2]indictment [PDF] states he lived in Sharon, Maryland, had worked at Raytheon for nearly 20 years, and would take home work on various US government projects in items as secure as a plastic bag. Holding a secret-level security clearance for a top military contractor, his work would often involve sensitive programs including missile defense systems and military radar components.
"Some of the technology was cutting edge," prosecutors said, "as it involved radar systems that were in the process of being implemented while the defendant was committing his crimes; some of those systems have not been fully implemented yet."
Uncle Sam said Serageldin copied as many as 31,000 pages of confidential and secret documents and took them home using a portable Western Digital hard drive, hardware he denied owning. Some of even ended up on the laptop of his lover.
"Defendant Serageldin kept the documents in or on his car’s glove box, his living room, his master bedroom closet, a spare bedroom, the dining room table, a sitting area, a utility room, and even his person," prosecutors noted. "Approximately ten unclassified documents were found on a laptop belonging to his mistress."
Interestingly, the case did not begin with a focus on Serageldin's retention of confidential information, but rather on time card fraud.
Don't mess with HR
Back in 2017, Raytheon suspected Serageldin had been taking off every Friday from January through March of that year yet recorded those days as time worked. Lying about hours worked would be bad enough at a private company, but when you're doing projects on the government's dime, it becomes a case of overcharging Uncle Sam.
Former Googler Anthony Levandowski ‘fesses up to pinching trade secrets about self-driving cars [3]READ MORE
It only got worse from there for Serageldin, as during a probe into the suspected time fraud, Raytheon investigators discovered from network history logs he had downloaded documents to an external drive against company policy. The engineer then tried to withhold or remove data from his personal laptop and two external drives after he was told to hand them over for inspection.
The matter was referred to the government at that point, and he was indicted in late 2018 for obstruction of justice. When he was picked up by the Feds, Serageldin was at a public library looking up information on how to wipe data from a computer.
At that point the focus of the case turned to the sensitive documents on his personal PC and two drives, and when the extent of the document hoard became clear, Serageldin decided to plead guilty.
The 18-month sentence, plus one year of probation and a $10,000 fine, is actually something of a win for Serageldin. Citing his efforts to thwart the investigation, prosecutors had earlier asked for a 60-month prison term. Serageldin's lawyers had sought three years' probation.
"While Mr Serageldin’s actions were wrong and foolish, he did not betray his country or sabotage his important work for Raytheon," Serageldin's team told the court. "Instead, Mr Serageldin remains loyal to both. But those facts do not excuse what he did, and he fully recognizes and appreciates the seriousness and the wrongfulness of this conduct." ®
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[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/07/23/serageldinsentence.pdf
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/07/23/serageldinindictment.pdf
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/20/anthony_levandowski_pleads_guilty/
[4] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Nope
would-be adversaries should have to buy the weapons systems to find out what they might be facing, just like everybody else, won't somebody think of the shareholders.
Secure Bag
"...would take home work on various US government projects in items as secure as a plastic bag."
Ages ago, if you wanted to carry classified stuff around it had to be put in a special black leather briefcase secured by a big brass lock, all witnessed by the site security officer. The briefcases were standard throughout the industry, so if you saw someone on a train with one it was almost certain that there were classified docs in it. A Tesco's plastic bag would have been a lot less conspicuous.
The practice died out sometime in the 90s and my company tried to sell off its stock of the bags to employees. In the end they couldn't give them away partly because of how nickable they were but mainly because you really needed a bowler hat to complete the look.
Re: Secure Bag
Way back in the early part of my career I was a Civil Servant for a while. As the IRA were active at the time they'd removed all the identifying logos of the vehicles but hadn't thought to issue standard tax discs instead of the "Government Vehicle" ones so they weren't exactly difficult to spot.
I was never important enough to have any classified documents* so the brief case issue didn't arise!
*I did have access to some sensitive information but I can't tell you about that...
Re: Secure Bag
Couldn't you have kept the big black leather suitcases, but carried them around in a Tesco's plastic bag?
Approximately ten
What? 9.6? 10.1? Has someone forgotten how to count?
Re: Approximately ten
And having documents on his person. Tattoos?
Re: Approximately ten
If the prosecution said 12, his defence team could argue about the classification status of one of the documents, so claim there were only 11. "About 10" avoids that distraction.
He'd have got less for being a cop and killing an unarmed person.
Isn't the US penalty for that a full disability pension? (Due to the PTSD caused by committing murder and getting away with it).
"he had downloaded documents to an external drive against company policy"
Well there's your problem : he had the possibility to connect an external drive. Add to that the fact that he probably had access to a lot more documents than he should have (c'mon, you know it has to be true), and it's blindingly obvious that he could export the data.
He's obviously guilty of having done that, but if he could not connect an external drive to his computer in the first place, then that would have been a serious barrier to overcome.
I find it interesting that they had logs of his activity, but no alerts on the logs. They had to go digging to find that out. Why wasn't there an alert when something classified is loaded onto an external drive ?
I have worked for banks and insurance companies that have more effective lock-downs than these clowns.
Re: "he had downloaded documents to an external drive against company policy"
In the interests of security a company I worked for removed hard drives and USB access from everyone except a select few. Given the sort of work that some people did, this was a very good idea . The select few were all very senior managers and they soon got fed up of engineers wandering into their offices with floppies/USB sticks and 25 pages of requisite authorizations. Solution? They 'delegated' the authority to their secretaries. All the secs' machines got their hard drives and USB access back and the engineers just dumped the paperwork in the tray and got on with uploading/downloading.
Nowadays it's called working from home. If he wasn't going to work on it and he wasn't selling it on (which seems to have been accepted) then time fraud seems a bit dubious. In fact he might have got more work done than if he'd been in the office.
Nope
This stuff should not even be secret in the first place. Let would-be adversaries see exactly what weapons they might be facing!