Expedia IT bod gets all-expenses-paid trip to prison after hacking execs' emails for profit

An ex-Expedia IT admin has been fined and jailed for 15 months after he spied on the emails of the travel giant's top brass to make insider trades. According to documents filed in the US district court of Seattle, Washington, Jonathan Ly was hired by Expedia in March 2013 as a mid-level tech support bod. Within three months, …

[Anonymous Coward]

40k per quarter? Deserves every bit of the sentence just for the sheer bloody idiocy.

[Anonymous Coward]

The stock market is a giant money laundering scam setup to help idiots pretend they are participating in a useful business method, when in reality they are marks for a crap shoot where only the big players and the house win. Sound familiar? Have you ever been invited to an IPO? Let me guess, no. Do you think you will ever be invited to one without you already having tons of money and a collection of influential white business guys helping you put your puny foot in the door? And you want to call insider trading a crime? There are entire companies who do this exact same thing, insider trading, but they get away with it by calling it something else. They call it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_network#Investor_Expert_Networks_2

(#Investor_Expert_Networks_2 is the page link, if it cuts off above)

Same thing, but since they are a corporation, they can get away with it through the threat of defending tribes of in-house lawyer-sharks. Don't let all the words fool you, these are organizations who infiltrate companies of interest, to "make network connections" to get at the source of the trading info. They pay you to rat out the inside info on the company where you work, for the sole purpose of making trades based on this insider information. It's the same thing that our "bad man" did in the article here, only he didn't go about it as another corporate entity.

Sorry, if you are an anti-wikipedia prude. I find the wiki highly useful for everyday knowledge in a wide variety of subjects where bias is not a factor. Tech info is great. I find info that is biased is usually not very good info to begin with. Take politics, please. The things that happen in the political world are non-scientific, garbage, nonsense issues. Taking it to mean more than it is, shit, is a frivolous effort, at best. And at the same time the wiki tries ever-too-hard to police itself when it really gets in the way of enjoying an article. Such as:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Clifton

Look at all the stupid warnings about lack of verification on a topic about a cutting-edge comic fucking with anyone and everyone, for a joke. It's overkill. We get it, there are some questionable items and things not fully explained... I'm not writing a book on Tony, I'm just refreshing my memory. Holy crap.

[Packet]

Now, now... You're just throwing out the baby with the bath water.

While there have been cases of illegal insider activity, that's not the norm.

It's also why various stock exchange governing bodies take illegal dissemination of information very seriously.

I have participated in IPO's and been invited to partake in some.

Have you?

[Doctor Syntax]

"a passwords file in an account belonging to an IT department boss, which opened every corporate email inbox"

Some people really should know better. And did the IT boss cover his tracks better than Ly?

[Tom Paine]

That detail puzzles me. How did the senior IT exec have access to users' plaintext passwords in the first place? (Or were these mail admin accounts?)

[Winkypop]

Sitting in the dock at the Bay

Watching my careeeeer fading away....

[Apols to: Otis Redding]

[Anonymous Coward]

Expedia

Anyone notice how all the prices on travel sites seem to be the same nowadays... Interesting all the backroom mergers & takeovers:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/travel/chi-travel-web-sites-story.html

https://skift.com/2015/03/10/expedia-makes-270-million-dollar-investment-in-latin-americas-decolar/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/mcgee/2015/03/04/airline-mergers-expedia-orbitz/24319965/

https://skift.com/2015/02/12/expedia-vs-priceline-adding-up-the-acquisitions/

[MyffyW]

Re: Expedia

" the prices on travel sites seem to be the same nowadays... "

I guess Adam Smith would point to the invisible hand of the market, mind you even he was wary of the Joint Stock companies of his day:

- "being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance ...[as] their own"

[keith_w]

Re: Expedia

Isn't that why senior management and the Directors have shares and options in the company they are managing?

[Anonymous Coward]

No sympathy! Dear Expedia we haven't forgotten this

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/21/italy_competition_watchdog_tripadvisor_expedia/

https://www.connexionfrance.com/Archive/Expedia-fined-for-duping-clients

http://www.bighospitality.co.uk/Legislation/IHG-hotel-deals-with-Expedia-and-Booking.com-investigated-by-OFT

[Gordon Pryra]

"as the son of poor immigrants"

And this is relevant how?

El Reg isn't the Daily Mail or Fox News, sort your act out.

[astrax]

Re: "as the son of poor immigrants"

I think it's referring to the origin of the guy's predisposition to having (lots of) money, rather than blaming the crime on the fact that his parents were a). poor and/or b). immigrants. Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "as the son of poor immigrants"

It's relevant in the context that the defendant was attempting to use it as a diminishing factor. It was a quote from the defendant, not being used as a slur.

[Redstone]

Remember Kids

insider trading is only OK if your office is in the Exec Suite.

[tentimes]

I wish he'd got away with it

Who cares? He should keep the money for his ingenuity.

[tedleaf]

And is there a new top man in charge of expedias I.t ?

That file of passwords should be enough to sack him and blackball him out of the game for life..

That would have cost an awful lot more if the wrong person had got to it..

A pair of fools,both of whom should be serving 15 years,not one doing 15 months..

[Daz555]

He deserves to lose the money after carrying on AFTER he left the organisation - that was a step waaay too far in terms of chances of getting caught. What a fool.

[Andromeda451]

poor immigrants?

And this is germane to the fact he's a cheat, thief and liar?