A 33-year-old Indian IT manager has pleaded guilty to sending damaging computer code to servers at his former employer, causing a loss of USD 5000 to firm’s intellectual property.

Nikhil Nilesh Shah of New Jersey pleaded guilty before US Magistrate Judge Robert Numbers of the Eastern District of North Carolina to one felony count of causing the transmission of computer code and as a result damaging computers, said Assistant Attorney General Leslie R Caldwell of the Justice Department‘s Criminal Division.

Mr Shah is scheduled to be sentenced in December this year. According to the indictment, from 2007 to March 2012, Mr Shah was an information technology manager at a company located in North Carolina that developed platforms for the creation of mobile applications and subsequently left the firm to work for another technology company.

According to facts presented to the court in connection with his plea agreement, in June 2012, Mr Shah sent malicious computer code to his former company’s computer servers in Durham and Raleigh, North Carolina, causing at least USD 5,000 in damage and deleting much of the company’s intellectual property.

According to the indictment, from 2007 to March 2012, Shah was an information technology manager at Smart Online Inc., a company located in Durham, North Carolina, that developed platforms for the creation of mobile applications. Shah subsequently left Smart Online to work for another technology company. According to facts presented to the court in connection with his plea agreement, on June 28, 2012, Shah sent malicious computer code to Smart Online’s computer servers in Durham and Raleigh, North Carolina, causing at least $5,000 in damage and deleting much of Smart Online’s intellectual property.

The case was investigated by the FBI’s Raleigh, North Carolina, Field Office. The case is being prosecuted by Senior Trial Attorney Richard D. Green of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Thomas B. Murphy and Adam Hulbig of the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of North Carolina.