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Woman Charged After Ex-Employer's Files Destroyed

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 16, 2009

Largo authorities have seized the laptop computer of a 21-year-old woman they say used it to access and destroy some of her former employer's files because she was upset she had been fired.

Brittany Jenkins, of 245 59th Ave. N.E., was arrested Feb. 2 on a charge of unauthorized access to a computer system. The laptop was seized last week.

Jenkins was fired in January from Specialized Medical Marketing, a company that sets up meetings between its clients and potential customers, according to court documents unsealed last week. She had taken excessive leave, the documents say.

Two days after her termination, Jenkins used the laptop and a former colleague's e-mail account to access 18 files originally assigned to her and then destroyed those files, the documents say.

The files contained spread sheets with lists of potential customers that one client asked Specialized Medical Marketing to contact, the documents say. They also contained information on telephone calls made by employees that are use to bill clients, the documents say.

Jenkins admitted to Largo police she used the Hewlett Packard laptop to log onto the former colleague's e-mail account via the Internet, the documents say. She said she was mad about having been fired, and initially was looking for evidence that her replacement was hired before Jenkins was
fired, the documents say.

Then, she told a Largo detective, "I had the bright idea to delete the files," the documents say.

She selected all of the files she accessed and then hit the delete button, the documents say. Then she struck another button telling the computer to "purge the trash" so the files couldn't be recovered, she told detectives, the documents say.

She said she wanted a situation where "there would not be any work for the day," she said.

The loss attributed to her actions is an estimated $3,000, the documents say.

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