A former owner and co-founder of Ink Labs, Inc., Jonathan Manzi, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and a year of supervised release for computer intrusion, according to United States Attorney Steven Russell.
The sentencing was conducted on April 20 by Senior United States District Judge John M. Gerrard in Lincoln, Nebraska. Manzi, 31, was also ordered to pay $655,000 in restitution for illegally accessing a protected computer and obtaining information from it.
Ink Labs is an education company that enables users to upload materials to the cloud and then print them at any printing location for a fee. Most of the company’s clients are colleges and universities.
One of Ink Labs’ competitors in this field is Wepa, Inc., based in Pelham, Alabama. In 2017, a former Ink Labs employee, who had resigned and joined Wepa, received notifications from Google and his cellular provider AT&T while abroad in Spain. The notifications alerted him that someone had been trying to access his device and accounts. His cellular phone lost service, and he discovered that someone had moved his phone number to a Samsung device without his permission.
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Nebraska, Manzi accessed the victim’s Gmail account without authorization on July 1, 2017.
“Manzi impersonated the victim to AT&T to gain control over the victim’s phone,” the press release read. “Once gaining control, Manzi was able to access the information contained in files and applications on the Google accounts, including access to the victim’s email account and web-based applications. Manzi then was able to obtain the victim’s login credentials for the Dropbox account for Wepa, Inc., which Manzi then used to access files belonging to Wepa.”
Manzi used the victim’s Google account to access Wepa’s Dropbox account once more in July 2017, changing the victim’s Dropbox password in the process. After getting into Wepa’s Dropbox account, Manzi was able to view Wepa’s information, including client data.