Network engineer sentenced for deleting patient info

Computerworld - A former network engineer for a family of San Diego-based community health clinics was sentenced this week to more than five years in prison for destroying patient data.

Jon Paul Oson was hit with 63 months in prison, along with an order to pay a total of $409,337.83 in restitution. He was employed as a network engineer and technical services manager at the Council of Community Health Clinics  from May 2004 until October 2005, according to the U.S. attorney's office in San Diego.

The Council of Community Health Clinics is a nonprofit organization consisting of 17 clinics that run more than 75 primary care sites in San Diego and Imperial counties.

Oson was convicted in August 2007 of two counts of hacking into and intentionally damaging protected computers.

Prosecutors charged that sabotaging the patient data caused losses of $144,358.83 to the Council of Community Health Clinics and $264,979 to the North County Health Services Clinic, which is the largest member of the group. On top of that, his actions caused patient care to suffer, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The clinics are set up to offer medical services to the poor, the uninsured and the underinsured.

According to the government, the council hosted and managed software applications for itself and for the North County Services Clinic. The software handles billing, schedules patient appointments and tracks medical information, such as diagnoses, treatment plans and case histories.

Prosecutors said Oson resigned from his position as network manager after receiving a performance review that he thought was negative. After leaving the company, the government charged that he accessed the network without authorization on Dec. 23, 2005. While in the network, he disabled the automatic backups of patient information. Then on Dec. 29, he broke into the system again and deleted information and applications on several servers, according to the government.

Oson was taken into custody following the sentencing on Monday.

The cybercrime squad in the San Diego division of the FBI investigated the case.

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