Computer programmer sentenced in NJ sabotage case

NEWARK, N.J.: A computer programmer was sentenced in federal court on Tuesday

to more than three years in prison for sabotaging his former company's

computers, causing a loss of more than $10 million, in the first such case to be

tried under a new federal law, prosecutors said.

Timothy Lloyd, 39, of Wilmington, Delaware, also was ordered to pay $2

million in restitution to Omega Engineering Corp., a Bridgeport, New Jersey,

defense contractor with offices in Stamford, Connecticut.

Lloyd was a "disgruntled employee" demoted after 11 years as the

company's chief programmer who retaliated by setting off a computer "time

bomb" that deleted the company's most critical software programs, said

Assistant US Attorney Grady O'Malley.

The "time bomb" program went off without warning on July 31, 1996,

when an employee randomly logged on, he said. The company claimed to have lost

more than $10 million in sales and future contracts as a result. The programs

that were deleted had been "the lifeblood of the company" that

instructed robotic machines to build Omega's measurement and control

instruments, O'Malley said.

Lloyd, who faced a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison on the

single count of computer fraud, was sentenced to three years and five months by

US District Court Judge William Walls. Lloyd was originally convicted in May

2000. That decision was overturned and then upheld in December 2001 by a federal

appeals court.

Lloyd told the court on Tuesday he was the victim of "a conspiracy"

between the company and government, said his attorney, Edward Crisonino, who

said he will appeal. Crisonino said the government's evidence, including a hard

drive found by Secret Service agents in Lloyd's garage containing time bomb

computer code, was insufficient proof of Lloyd's guilt.

"It could have been a computer failure or, even if it was a time bomb,

we don't feel they proved it was him," Crisonino said. Other employees had

easy access to the company's network system and could have committed sabotage,

he said.

The case is the first to be tried under a relatively new federal law -- Fraud

and Related Activities In Connection With Computers -- set up in 1994 amid a

growing wave of computer hacking, O'Malley said. Others have committed crimes

covered by the law but have pled guilty and not gone to trial, the prosecutor

said.