Former St. Louis Cardinals scouting director Christopher Correa has pleaded guilty to hacking a database belonging to the Houston Astros, according to the Department of Justice.
Correa, 35, was charged with five counts of unauthorized access of a
protected computer and pleaded guilty to all counts. No other Cardinals
employee was charged in the hacking scandal.
The Astros operated a private online database, nicknamed Ground Control,
that housed a variety of confidential information, including scouting
reports, statistics and contract information. It also housed the email
accounts of Astros employees.
As part of a plea deal, Correa admitted that he accessed the database
and email accounts of others from March 2013 to March 2014 in order to
gain access to Astros' proprietary information.
When an Astros employee who had previously worked for the Cardinals
returned his Cardinals-owned laptop to Correa, he also gave him the
password, allowing Correa to then access the employee's Astros email
account. Throughout 2013, Correa was able to access scout rankings of
every player eligible for the draft and viewed a weekly digest page that
described the performance and injuries of prospects the Astros were
considering, according to officials.
In July 2013, Correa accessed the account during the trade deadline and
viewed notes of the Astros’ trade discussions with other teams, the
officials said.
After another set of intrusions in March 2014, Astros personnel
implemented more security precautions by changing the database's URL and
requiring all users to switch to more complex passwords. Correa was
able to access the former Cardinals employee's email once again on his
old laptop and obtained the new URL and newly reset passwords for all
employees, according to the DOJ.
Correa then viewed a total of 118 webpages including rankings of players
whom Astros scouts desired in the upcoming draft, summaries of scouting
evaluations and summaries of college players identified by the Astros’
analytics department as top performers, according to the DOJ.
Correa joined the Cardinals in 2009 and was made Director of Scouting in December 2014. He was fired in July.
Each conviction of unauthorized access of a protected computer carries a
maximum possible sentence of five years in federal prison and a
possible $250,000 fine, the Department of Justice said.
Representatives for the St. Louis Cardinals and Major League Baseball
were not immediately available. A representative for the Houston Astros
declined to comment.
Source: ABCNews
Source: ABCNews