Thank you to all the fellow nerds that clicked on this article via a Google search because we used ‘crack’ in the headline instead of ‘hack’.
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U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Hughes sentenced former Cardinals Scouting Director Christopher Correa to 46 months prison time and $279,038 in restitution for using a former boss’ password to log into the Astros scouting database.
Former STL scouting director Chris Correa sentenced to nearly 4 yrs in prison for illegally accessing Astros’ data. https://t.co/SgrKY1FiHW
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) July 18, 2016
Here is the judge’s rationale for the sentence:
“The loss is that every baseball team has much tighter security, making it harder for honest people to go about their daily lives … A lot of little people whose lives were adversely affected by the cost taken to defend against people like you.”
It’s estimated that Correa logged into the Astros’ system around 60 times on 35 different days with a false identity. It’s not clear how the number 1.7 million dollars was calculated, but Federal Prosecutors claim that was the monetary damage inflicted.
Now that Correa has been sentenced and the criminal investigation has ended, MLB will start the process of assessing what punishment the Cardinals will incur as a team.
It is widely speculated that Correa believed that the Astros were using Cardinals related information due to the departure of former front office executives Jeff Luhnow and Sig Mejdal to Houston and had tried to argue that his (former) employer (Cardinals) was the actual victim of malicious behavior before pleading guilty.
But he seemed to be contrite by the end of the case:
“I violated my values and it was wrong. I behaved shamefully,” he said. “The whole episode represents the worst thing I’ve done in my life by far.”
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Take my opinion with a truckload of salt, but – to me – this has always felt like a story that has been sensationalized way more than it deserved to be.
Our man @dfbarron with more details on the Chris Correa sentencing .. why so tough? how many hacks and more https://t.co/CJ8OzvhkC9
— Reid Laymance (@ReidLaymance) July 18, 2016
In a nutshell:
1) Dude has his boss leave. Starts seeing some ideas they worked on together being implemented in a new place. Or at least ideas that seem similar.
2) Dude gets angry. Decides to tool around on the Astros’ intranet. When he sees something PW protected, remembers he’s got some old PWs from the boss on an laptop and tries them out.
3) It worked. Holy crap!
4) He starts tooling around on the site. Gets some data. Justifies it by saying that this is something he used to work on with the boss. Or at least something very similar.
5) Gets caught.
Should he be punished? Yes. Definitely, yes. Can’t let your emotions over rule your good judgment in business. And by using that data, the Astros probably got screwed in some form or fashion.
But almost 4 years in prison on top of a quarter million dollar plus fine? My gut is telling me that seems stiff. At least compared to other misdeeds that haven’t really been atoned for with prison time.
Candidly I don’t know all the details of the case. And I could be wrong and this could be much more serious than we’ll ever know.
Or…
Could it be a guy made a pretty bad mistake because he was passionate about his job and is now paying through the nose?
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The Cardinals are on an island here.
Now that Chris Correa's sentence has been levied, Major League Baseball plans to come down with punishment on the Cardinals for the hack.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 18, 2016
This will be a touchstone for the early part of new MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s tenure. Go too light in his punishment of the team and he can expect owners to be miffed. Go too harsh and he gets painted as the next Roger Goodell.
Loss of draft picks and a fine is almost assured.
But how many? How much?
Today Chris Correa got his punishment. Soon the Cardinals will follow.
Photo: NY Times
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