CAMARILLO : Ex-Worker Sentenced for Computer Crime
A former employee of Camarillo-based Siemens Solar Industries was sentenced Wednesday to 90 days in jail in what authorities say is the first industrial-espionage case ever prosecuted in Ventura County.
Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell issued the sentence to George Stockhausen, a former facilities manager at the company who was convicted Jan. 25 of one count of burglary and one count of unlawful access of a computer, which falls under the industrial-espionage category, prosecutors said.
A Siemens security guard caught Stockhausen downloading computer files in the company’s legal office shortly after midnight Feb. 27, 1993.
The defendant confessed to private investigators that he entered the locked, off-limits office from a rooftop and copied the files. He told them he was trying retrieve information on a manager’s drug test. Stockhausen did not take the stand during his trial.
Prosecutors said it is illegal to copy computer files without permission, regardless of a person’s motive for doing so.
Campbell ordered Stockhausen, who lives in Lancaster, to turn himself in at the Ventura County Jail on April 27.
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