Former Infrastructure Engineer Sentenced for Sabotaging Employer’s Windows Network
Daniel Rhyne was sentenced to 32 months for sabotaging a New Jersey company’s Windows network and demanding bitcoin.
Daniel Rhyne, a former core infrastructure engineer from Kansas City, was sentenced on September 28, 2026, to 32 months in federal prison in Trenton. He admitted sabotaging an unnamed New Jersey industrial company’s Windows domain in November 2023 using a hidden virtual machine and remote desktop access to a domain administrator account. Scheduled tasks deleted 13 domain administrator accounts, changed passwords for 301 domain users, and reset local administrator passwords affecting 254 servers and 3,284 workstations. An external email demanded 20 bitcoin, then about $750,000, and threatened daily server shutdowns; investigators linked the activity to his laptop, residence IP, and a reused password.