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Nineveh Man Sentenced To Prison For Stealing Information From Electric Metal Fab

Last updated on Thursday, June 15, 2017

(EVANSVILLE) - A Nineveh man was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to prison for stealing proprietary data and illegally tapping into emails at Nashville’s Electric Metal Fab.

34-year-old Benjamin Levi Cox pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of interception of electronic communications.

U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker sentenced Cox to eight months in prison, to spend seven months on home confinement and two years on supervised release. Cox also must pay $27,490 in restitution and perform six months of volunteer community service.

The Helmsburg Road business designs and manufactures stainless-steel pharmaceutical and food service industry equipment such as benches, cabinets, tables, carts and conveyors.

A news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office say Cox, who was the company's information technology system administrator and a computer-aided drafting designer, covertly copied company data to an external hard drive over three months in the spring of 2013.

Cox admitted that after he resigned from the Nashville firm in June 2013, he took the hard drive containing the stolen data to his new job with a direct competitor. Cox copied files to his new employer's computer, altered designs to appear as if they had been created by the competitor, then got $45,000 in new contracts with former customers of his previous employer.

Before switching jobs, Cox reconfigured his email so he would continue to receive internal company messages at his new job.

"Companies have the right to keep their proprietary interests out of the hands of competitors," U.S. Attorney Josh Minkler says in the release. "Those who choose to steal from their employer and then attempt to obstruct a criminal investigation will be held accountable."

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