Sysadmin gets 5 years for slurping contractor payments to employer

A 49-year-old IT bloke from Essex has been sentenced to five years' imprisonment on two counts of fraud after his cunning plan to steal £450,000 from his employer was uncovered... almost immediately. Adeshola Dada, of Watts Crescent, Purfleet, Essex, was employed in the IT department of Genesis Housing Association, where he …

[FuzzyWuzzys]

And this is why...

...we get PHBs coming up with ideas like, "Can we have a database/system that can be adminsitered, backed up and secured by the sysadmins but data cannot be accessed? We have to have it as we cannot trust them. Well spend anything up to and including sweet FA to make it work.".

[Halfmad]

Re: And this is why...

I don't even have PHBs doing that, it'd be too complicated. They have utter trust in IT to do everything honestly but zero faith in anyone else.

It's as if IT is just a short way of saying "magic".

Oh it's the magic department.. they can do no wrong, but at the same time they don't need extra money or staff because "magic".

[Korev]

Re: And this is why...

Isn't this why Oracle have the sysoper privileges?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And this is why...

No, that's why Oracle has Vault. Still, the Vault administrators...

[Ragarath]

Re: And this is why...

But who has the access to give the access? Always with computer systems there has to be someone responsible for being able to sort out problems. That person needs full access. If they did not then when things go wrong there would be no one to fix them as no one would have access.

This is why the people with this access must be trusted. In small IT operations it is usually a single person with the keys to all and they need to have the integrity needed for that role.

[nuked]

hmmm...

So a similar sentence for arms trading and female circumcision. Seems proportionate...

[2460 Something]

Re: hmmm...

Unfortunately nothing in our legal system is appropriate proportionate.

It's almost like it was designed hundreds of years ago and then kept having new things tacked on to it with more weighty sentences for those who can't pay for a top lawyer ... Unfortunately.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: hmmm...

"hundreds of years ago and then kept having new things tacked on to it with more weighty sentences for those who can't pay for a top lawyer"

Hundreds of years ago you could be hung* for not being able to pay a fine. I don't thing they've added more weighty sentences than that.

*Or beheaded in Halifax.

[Peter2]

Re: hmmm...

"Hundreds of years ago you could be hung* for not being able to pay a fine."

[citation needed]

Debtors prison would have been more likely? At worst transportation beyond the seas in most cases, probably to then end up in indentured servitude to somebody in the 13 colonies who needed cheap workers which nets the person owed money some return for having done so.

Hanging people was usually reserved for severe crimes, such as stealing food if you were starving, for instance. Though transportation for that was more likely, or you might possibly find that you'd involuntarily volunteered to join the Royal Navy to man the fleet if during the Great French war, thereby gaining a seventy pound bounty which then belonged to you, and could be seized by the court. (depending on how the Magistrate was feeling at the time.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: hmmm...

Hundreds of years ago you could be hung* for not being able to pay a fine.

For how long? Or did you mean "hanged"?

:)

[Xamol]

Re: hmmm...

* hanged

Edit - AC beat me to it...

[Rob Daglish]

Re: hmmm...

Christ, that's a bit strong - by all means behead someone, but taking them to Halifax first counts as a cruel and unusual punishment, surely?

[Ojustaboo]

Re: hmmm...

Got to be fair in justice :)

The guy that nearly killed me by kicking my eyesocket into my brain (needed 3 ops) in crown court, it turned out he was already on bail for a similar offence.

His sentence, 7 months

[Anonymous Coward]

"And he would have got away with it too, if it wasn't for a simple scheduled audit"

Any meddling kids involved?

[Anonymous Coward]

"And he would have got away with it too,"

In other words, he didn't really give too much thought to how he was going to do it, avoid detection, and cover his tracks.....

Hmmmm....

[calmeilles]

Re: "And he would have got away with it too,"

You just can't get the staff these days...

[Steven Roper]

Love the pussy pass

"Danielle Gillian Brown, 25, of Church Lane, N8 was found guilty of the same offence. She was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment, suspended for one year."

Same offence, half the sentence, because vagina. And you people wonder why I bitch about feminism.

Go on, downvote me. I've been getting too many upvotes for my other posts lately anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Love the pussy pass

Ever thought they others may of had previous?

Or that although she committed the crime, she was not the main person?

If 3 of you go into a bank and one of you has a gun and threatens the staff. All three will be done for armed robbery. The one with the gun and / or the one that did most of the planning and leadership of the event, will get the bigger sentencing.

See no feminism required.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Love the pussy pass

Sentence might also have been reduced for "cooperation" or other mitigating circumstances (eg dependents)

Ansar Ali pleaded guilty upfront which might have helped his sentence.

Dada had a previous conviction

Met has mugshots along with the report - http://news.met.police.uk/news/man-jailed-for-fraud-187729

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Love the pussy pass

@ Lost all faith....

"Of" is STILL not a substitute for "have".

Have a fucking word with yourself man....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Love the pussy pass

Same offence, half the sentence, because vagina

Is that what is known as "penis envy"? Or "envy because, well, penis"?

Or is your name Richard?

:)

[mattje]

Re: Love the pussy pass

When you post this ignorant misogynistic crap, there is no mystery as to why you might "bitch about feminism".

[Peter2]

Re: Love the pussy pass

if somebody got nine months imprisionment, suspended for one year then I think legally the situation is that they leave court as a free person and continue in this state until said person comes to the attention of the courts again. At which point a judge might order that the suspension is lifted and the person serve the previously suspended sentance.

So the sentance is actually nothing, provided that the courts aren't troubled again by the person within the next twelve months.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Love the pussy pass

>Go on, downvote me. I've been getting too many upvotes for my other posts lately anyway.

That's weird because your ilk usually only came in the past for the now largely defunct human climate change denial articles.

Edit: Just remembered about all the Trump articles lately. Must be it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Love the pussy pass

Just FTR, what's the penalty for male genital mutilation?

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: Love the pussy pass

"And you people wonder why I bitch about feminism."

Nope, your comments make that abundantly clear.

[Steven Roper]

Re: Love the pussy pass

Right, here's a little present for the 22 people whio downvoted me. From your own beloved pro-feminist Huffington Post, no less.

[Sparkypatrick]

"the only person with password reset privileges on Genesis' systems."

In a company with 1200 employees? I'm surprised he found the time for anything else.

[JimmyPage]

One again JPs axiom proves true ...

criminals start from a position of being thick as shit.

(The other axiom is that the police are only marginally less thick, which is why society is generally fairly safe. In support of my assertion, I give you yesterdays announcement from Sir B-H-H)

[Anonymous Coward]

Police report says it happened in 2011 so it took 5 years to get a conviction. Legal system is slowwwww

[Anonymous Coward]

British "justice".

Best in the world according to some :/

[Anonymous Coward]

@ AC British Justice

British "injustice".

Best in the world according to some :/

TFTFY

[JimmyPage]

British justice

The best money can buy.

[Miss Config]

The old ones are the best

Computer fraud is as old as computers. Take computer fraud to mean the illegal moving of money through bank accounts via a computer's overnight jobs and the processing of individual computer records ( as happened in this case ).

The 'original' computer fraud job goes back to the time when rounding was a new idea in computing terms ( COBOL ? ). The question about this story is whether it actually happened or is it an urban myth ?

Seems a programmer rewrote a bank system so that any rounding done by the system benefitted him personally. So interest is calculated for an account and if said interest includes a fraction of a penny then that is NOT added to the account in question but sent to the programmer's account.

So the calculation says the interest is £31.735p but the account only receives £31.73p with the extra ha'penny credited to the programmer's account. A trivial sum, even back then, but when it happens literally tens of thousands of times then the money stolen does add up.

[Steve K]

Re: The old ones are the best

Are you thinking of Superman 2 and the Richard Pryor character...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The old ones are the best

"Are you thinking of Superman 2 and the Richard Pryor character...?"

It was already in computer folklore when I started in IT in 1977.

Shoot. Coming up to 40 years of IT.

[Steve K]

Re: The old ones are the best

I remember when this database was all fields.....;-)

[ecofeco]

Dada?

That's surreal.

[dvd]

Computer fraud is easy. ...

It's getting away with it that's a bit of a bugger. .....

[Dr Patrick J R Harkin]

Quis sysadminiat ispos sysasminodes?

But I must ponder on why the final miscreant got a suspended sentence but no community work order. Obviously, it can't be her gender which made a difference in sentencing, could it?