Man arrested for threatening to hack company unless firm fires female employee and hires him
While there are many ways that one make himself or herself stand out to get hired at a company of his or her choice, but this Washington-based man chose to threaten a company to fire its current employee and hire him instead or be ready to face dreadful consequences.
Todd Michael Gori, a 28-year-old resident of Wenatchee, Washington, had threatened a healthcare software manufacturer company for refusing to hire him. He told Chapel Hill company TSI Healthcare that he would carry out cyber attacks on them along with his unnamed friends if the company did not fire its current female employee and hired him instead.
According to the court documents, Gori threatened the firm through an email sent from this Washington State home.
“This is not a threat,” Gori wrote in an e-mail. “This is not a means of leverage. This is saving myself and [identity redacted] and if you do not comply you can prepare for the most annoying and pesky uphill cyber battle your company has ever seen.”
The company reported the threat immediately to the FBI after receiving the emails.
Apparently, Gori had some personal grudge against the female employee working at TSI Healthcare, reveals the documents obtained by Bleeping Computer who had already rejected his job application several times in the past.
Gori wrote in his email about the female employee that: “I am giving you, TSI healthcare two choices. You either lay-off [identity redacted] and replace her with me, an operator 100x better that she is oppressing. Or I will take out your entire company along with my comrades via a cyber attack. Again you have two choices. Get ride of her and hire me. Or slowly be chipped away at until you are gone. She is a horrible operator that can only manage 2 screens with an over inflated travel budget. I fly at least 10x as many places as this loon on 1/5th of the budget. I have petitioned for a job with you guys with her as a reference as I am a felon with computer skills and need assistance getting work as technically I have ‘no work history’. She declines everytime and burries me even further.”
The email continued, “I’m giving you guys 72 hours to respond until the attack goes full scale. There is nothing that can be done to stop the attacks. I have run multiple penetration tests on your entire network and your company fails miserably.”
In his email, Gori had acknowledged that he had already pen-tested TSI Healthcare’s website and found security vulnerabilities.
Bleeping Computer reported that Gori was arrested in August 2017 and had pleaded guilty on September 6, 2017, to one count of threatening to damage protected computers, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1030(a)(7)(A).
Earlier, a grand jury had accused Gori with more severe crimes after he threatened to travel to North Carolina to purchase a gun and shoot people at the healthcare company. However, that charge was later dropped by federal prosecutors when he pleaded guilty.
Last week, Gori was sentenced to 37 months in prison by a North Carolina judge for threatening the healthcare firm. Additionally, Gori has been sentenced to 3 years of supervised release.
