Former CU Employee Sentenced in IT Revenge Case

A federal judge on Friday sentenced Juliana Barile, a former employee of Penn South Cooperative Federal Credit Union in New York, to three years’ probation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.

She pleaded guilty in 2021 to one count of computer intrusion when, in an act of angry revenge for being fired via a text message, Barile deleted more than 20,433 files and 3,478 directories from the New York City credit union’s IT system within 40 minutes and later joked about it to a friend, according to court documents. Penn South spent $10,115 to fix the unauthorized intrusion and destruction of data.

What’s more, just three months ago, Barile allegedly violated her release on bond conditions after she had been charged in Kings County Criminal Court with criminal mischief with an intent to damage another person’s property. A lawyer representing Barile in this case, however, claimed in a letter to the federal judge that the local prosecutor was contemplating dismissing this charge.

On Oct. 15 in the hallway of her residential apartment building, Barile allegedly poured bleach on a neighbor’s baby stroller and removed the neighbor’s bicycle from a hook on a wall and threw it to the ground causing damage.

In the Penn South case, federal prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of six to 12 months for Barile to U.S. District Court Judge Eric N. Vitaliano. Barile’s lawyer argued in a sentencing memo, however, that she be given a sentence of probation because her criminal offense, though serious, was isolated, out of character and aberrant conduct that flowed from her issues and not by a pure sense of malice.

But prosecutors argued otherwise.

“Although the defendant purports to take full responsibility for her criminal conduct and to feel remorse, the letter she wrote to the Court in support of the sentencing memorandum filed by her counsel belies that assertion,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “In her letter, the defendant characterizes her conduct as ‘bad judgement in a time of haste.’ She relays that the Credit Union, her secondary employer, fired her via text message while she was at her primary employment in Westchester, New York. She states that, after completing work that day, she drove from Westchester to her home in Brooklyn, and that during that trip, her sadness turned to anger and consumed her, culminating in her unauthorized access of the Credit Union’s server and deletion of its data after arriving home.”

Prosecutors also pointed out that contrary to Barile’s description, she did not delete the credit union’s data in haste immediately after learning she had been fired. In fact, she accessed the credit union’s server and deleted the files two days after she had been fired by text message. Barile said she was terminated without warning or explanation.

Although Barile said in her sentencing memo to Judge Vitaliano that she swiftly acknowledged her conduct was wrong, prosecutors said five days after deleting the credit union’s files, Barile joked about it to a friend via a text message that included the LOL acronym.

Prosecutors argued that the laugh-out-loud acronym suggests she did not appreciate the seriousness or wrongfulness of her conduct or regret her behavior.

But in her sentencing memo, Barile said she took steps to mitigate the effect of her crime by cooperating with investigators and assisting authorities in her own prosecution by entering a guilty plea (in August 2021), only a few months after she committed the offense in May. Barile also indicated in her memo that by the time of her sentencing – if not sooner – she will have made full restitution of $10,000 to Penn South.

The credit union did not respond to CU Times for a request for comment.