Disgruntled Cloud Engineer Sentenced To Two Years In Prison For Intentionally Damaging His Former Employer’s Computer Network After He Was Fired

SAN FRANCISCO – Miklos Daniel Brody was sentenced to 24 months in prison today for a network intrusion and for making false statements to a government agency, announced United States Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey and United States Secret Service (USSS) Special Agent in Charge Shawn M. Bradstreet. The sentence was handed down by the Hon. William. H. Orrick, Senior United States District Judge.

Brody, 38, of San Francisco, pleaded guilty in April 2023 to two charges that he violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—by obtaining information from a protected computer, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C) and (c)(2)(B), and by intentionally damaging a protected computer, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5)(A) and (c)(4)(B)(i)—and one charge of making false statements to a government agency, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2).

According to a superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury in December 2022, Brody worked as a cloud engineer for a bank headquartered in San Francisco until March 11, 2020, when he was fired for violating company policy.

The superseding indictment alleges that, later that evening, and continuing into the following morning, Brody used his company-issued laptop—which he failed to return upon being fired—to access the bank’s computer network without authorization and to cause substantial damage. Among other things, Brody deleted the bank’s code repositories, ran a malicious script to delete logs, left taunts within the bank’s code for former colleagues, and impersonated other bank employees by opening sessions in their names. He also emailed himself proprietary bank code that he had worked on as an employee, which was valued at over $5,000. At the sentencing hearing, Judge Orrick determined the total cost of the damage to the bank’s systems to be at least $220,621.22.

The superseding indictment also alleges that, in the days and weeks that followed his firing, Brody engaged in a series of evasive and deceptive actions, including filing a police report in which he falsely told the San Francisco Police Department that his company-issued laptop had been stolen from his car while he was working out at the gym. Brody doubled down on that false allegation in statements he made to USSS agents during an interview following his arrest in March 2021. In his guilty plea application, Brody admitted he made a false statement about the company-issued laptop and that he knew his statement was false at the time.

In addition to sentencing Brody to prison, Judge Orrick ordered him to pay restitution totaling $529,266.37 and to serve three years of supervised release to begin after his prison term is completed.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Lauren M. Harding and George O. Hageman are prosecuting the case, with assistance from Paralegal Specialist Mark DiCenzo. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the U.S. Secret Service.