Why Even Stupid Criminals Can Still Cost You Lots of Money

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An interesting article was published yesterday regarding innovative job-seeker Attilla Nemeth, a 26-year-old Hungarian who was eager to get a job in Marriott International’s IT department. While “innovative” and “eager” are normally good qualities in an IT staffer, Mr. Nemeth’s decision to commit extortion in pursuit of this job was—at best—ill advised.

Here’s the story: on November 11th of last year, Mr. Nemeth sent an email to Marriott telling them he had been accessing their network for several months and had obtained confidential information as a result of his snooping around. In the email he threatened to reveal this information publicly if he was not given a job as an IT staffer. After Marriott did not respond to this threat, Mr. Nemeth then sent them some of the documents he had accessed, purportedly as a result of an infected email attachment he had sent to several targeted Marriott employees.

Marriott contacted the US Secret Service and created a bogus HR employee to serve as the contact for Mr. Nemeth in an effort to catch him. He believed the ruse and continued the dialog with the agent/employee. After several weeks, Marriott purchased an airline ticket for Mr. Nemeth who arrived in Washington, DC, and was interviewed for the position he sought. During the interview, he told the agent/employee that he had stolen Marriott data, sent the extorting emails, demonstrated his technique for infiltrating the Marriott network, and identified where in Hungary he was storing the stolen information.

Mr. Nemeth has pled guilty to two counts that could land him in federal prison for up to 15 years—he will be sentenced in February 2012.

Even though Mr. Nemeth may not have been the brightest bulb among those seeking a job at Marriott International, he had a major impact on the company’s IT department. Marriott was forced to have more than 100 employees search across its network to figure out exactly what Mr. Nemeth had stolen and how he accessed this information. Marriott estimates that it spent anywhere from $400,000 to $1 million in consultants, employee salaries and various other costs associated with this exercise.