A Florida woman faces 15 years behind bars, all for deleting job applications and resumes from her boss’s computer system. The former head of HR had already been fired for petty retaliation when she decided to get even pettier.
Fired Over Workplace Drama
Medghyne Calonge, 41, had been hired as the Head of Human Resources at the St.Petersburg office of an online provider of professional services. Florida court documents only list the company as “Employer-1”.
After just a few months, “Employer-1” fired Calonge for failing to meet the minimum requirements of her job. Among other things, she had improperly downgraded another employee’s access to the company computer system following an argument.
Before being escorted out of the building, witnesses saw Calonge spamming the delete key on her desktop computer. After she was booted from the property, Calonge logged back into the company computer system to continue her digital rampage over the next two days.
Thousands in Damage
Condolences to anyone who applied for a job through “Employer-1”, because Calonge deleted over 17,000 job applications and resumes. To add insult to injury, she also left profanity-ridden messages inside the system for the company to find.
Medghyne Calonge utterly destroyed her former employer’s system. The company ended up spending $100,000 repairing the damage, but was still unable to recover the data deleted by Calonge. Florida authorities charged Calonge with one count of intentionally causing damage to a protected computer and one count of accessing a protected computer and recklessly causing damage.
A jury found Calonge guilty and now she faces up to fifteen years in prison for her attempt at payback.