Digital Forensics Dispatch

Florida Woman Convicted of Damaging Former Employer’s Computes After Termination

August 26, 2021

The Department of Justice issued a press release detailing the conviction of Medghyne Calonge. Calonge was found guilty by a unanimous jury of intentionally and maliciously causing damage to the computers of her former employer.

Calonge was hired by an online provider of professional services based in Manhattan, which has been identified as Employer-1, to serve as the human resources head in the company’s St. Petersburg, Florida office. Calonge was hired in January of 2019 and was subsequently terminated on June 28, 2019, for failing to meet the minimum requirements for the job.

Evidence presented at trial included information about Calonge’s actions while she was being terminated. “[Calonge] was observed by two employees of Employer-1 repeatedly hitting the delete key on her desktop computer” the release states. Then after she was escorted out of the building, she logged into a computer system used by the employer to manage job applications, which the company had invested over $100,000 to build and maintain. Over the course of the next few days Calonge was able to delete over 17,000 applications in that system and left several messages containing profane language.

Calonge was convicted of one count of intentionally damaging computers and one count of recklessly damaging computers, which carry a maximum of 10 years and 5 years respectively. U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss is quoted stating “Her actions wiped out information vitally important to the employer company and cost the company money and time to repair.”

The damage that previous employees can do to an employer’s system after they have left can be astronomical if the appropriate actions are not taken to remove the departing employee’s access to information on the system.

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