Former Orting schools IT employee charged with computer trespass, malicious mischief
A former Orting School District IT employee who resigned after being accused of improperly using district money now has been charged with first-degree computer trespass and third-degree malicious mischief.
Charging papers filed Monday in Pierce County Superior Court accuse 43-year-old Jason Irvin Rudolph of changing the password to his former wife’s work email account, deleting five years of messages and setting an auto-reply message that she no longer worked there.
Court records did not list an attorney for Rudolph.
The charging papers give this account of what happened:
Someone accessed their son’s gaming account and changed the son’s email password in June from an IP address that belonged to Rudolph. This was after child custody disputes between Rudolph and his ex-wife.
The woman said Rudolph often punished the son by changing passwords to lock the son out of gaming accounts.
The mother’s work email password then was reset, and the password recovery email address was changed to the son’s email. Her emails from the past five years were deleted, and an auto-reply message was set to say that she wouldn’t be working at the company.
There also was an online attack on the company’s server. The business lost more than $10,000 as a result.
“An important fact that must be considered in this case is Jason Rudolph’s level of expertise in his career field; he served as the IT Director for the Orting School District and has had years of extensive training and experience in the field of computer networking,” the declaration for determination of probable cause said. “This training includes how to safeguard against ‘hacking’ and ‘cyberattacks.’”
That was after state auditors found he’d taken home electronics worth more than $4,100.
The school district also paid for a private investigation that found he used a district credit card to buy two hoverboards, a router, wireless headphones and laptops from 2016 to 2018.
Electronics that belonged to the district were allegedly found at his home.
