A former information technology worker at the U.S. unit of drug maker Shionogi & Co. was sentenced to nearly 3½ years in prison for hacking into the company's computer network and deleting parts of it, court records show.
In addition to his 41-month sentence, Jason Cornish, 37, must pay $812,567 (about ¥63 million) in restitution to New Jersey-based Shionogi Inc., U.S. District Judge Stanley Chesler ordered.
In August, Cornish pleaded guilty in a federal court in Newark, New Jersey, to carrying out the attack Feb. 3, 2011.
According to a statement by New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, Cornish resigned from Shionogi in September 2010 after the company announced job cuts that would affect his former supervisor, who was a close friend.
In the attack, he deleted servers that housed most of Shionogi's American computer infrastructure, "effectively freezing Shionogi's operations for a number of days, leaving company employees unable to ship product, cut checks or communicate by email," Fishman said.