Rodney Reed Caverly, 53, of Mint Hill, entered a guilty plea today to a federal bill of information charging him with unauthorized access to one or more protected computers of a financial institution, in violation of federal law. The charged offense is punishable by up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and a supervised release term after imprisonment of up to three years.
By law, Caverly also will be required to pay restitution. According to the bill of information, the Bank of America had employed Caverly for the purpose of maintaining and designing its computer systems, including computers utilized for conducting financial transactions at its ATM's.
Caverly devised a scheme and artifice to defraud Bank of America, that is, a scheme to deploy a malicious computer code to Bank of America’s protected computers and computerized ATMs for the purpose of causing the affected ATMs to make fraudulent and unauthorized disbursements of cash without any transactional computer record of said cash disbursements.
Bank of America utilized “protected computers,” as that term is defined in Title 18, United States Code, Section 1030(e)(2), in interstate and foreign commerce to provide automated banking services to its customers, including the disbursement of cash through computerized automated teller machines (ATMs.
From March 20, 2009 to October 11, 2009, Caverly knowingly and with intent to defraud accessed one or more protected computers, exceeding his authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthered the intended fraud and obtained something of value, specifically, United States currency in excess of $5,000 within a one-year time period.
During the plea hearing, the Government advised the Court that Bank of America reported a loss connected to Caverly’s scheme of $304,000 in cash from its ATMs. Cash totaling $167,010 was recovered from a location that Caverly identified to U.S. Secret Service agents.
Caverly is free on a $25,000 personal signature bond until the time of sentencing. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.
