This article is more than 1 year old

Brit sentenced in Daily Mail hacking plot

Turned in by the competition

Former Daily Mail employee William Culbert approached the Daily Express with an exclusive offer to disable the Mail's operations for a week in exchange for £600,000, but earned himself eighteen months in the slam instead.

Culbert apparently sought revenge against his former employer after shift changes caused him to resign.

He threatened to use his insider knowledge of the Mail's crummy computer security to disable operations for up to a week. "I have the knowledge and the access to take everything down and I can take it right down." The effects of this attack would last up to a week because "they are not terribly efficient....they do not have a backup system".

The Mail has since invested £63,000 in computer security which it undoubtedly needed all along.

Express production manager Paul Rudd tipped the coppers, who for three weeks tapped Culbert's phone until they could gather enough evidence to prosecute him.

Culbert's lawyer said the defendant was suffering from some manner of depressive illness brought on by the shift changes which inspired his resignation from work.

But Southwark Crown Court Judge Peter Fingret addressed Culbert, saying he was "satisfied from everything I have seen and heard that you were planning to bring down the operations of one of the principal newspapers in this country," and that he had devised a "carefully-prepared plan to use your expertise and show that you could do the damage you claimed."

Well, it was worth a shot..... ®

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