Former engineer jailed in $750,000 cyber extortion case

Daniel Rhyne, 59, of Kansas City, Missouri, was sentenced Sept. 28 to 32 months in federal prison for an insider cyber extortion scheme targeting his former employer, a New Jersey industrial firm.

Rhyne pleaded guilty to extortion involving a threat to damage a protected computer and to intentionally damaging a protected computer. He had worked for the firm as a core infrastructure engineer.

In November 2023, Rhyne placed scheduled tasks on the company’s domain controller. The tasks were set to delete 13 domain administrator accounts, change the passwords for 301 domain users and alter local administrator passwords affecting 254 servers and 3,284 workstations. The changes blocked employees from accessing company systems and data. Many of the new passwords were set to “TheFr0zenCrew!”

The tasks ran late on Nov. 25. Within an hour, some employees received an email from an external address with the subject line, “Your Network Has Been Penetrated.” The message claimed that administrator accounts had been deleted or locked, backups had been removed and 40 random servers would be shut down each day for 10 days unless the company paid 20 bitcoin. The cryptocurrency was worth about $750,000 at the time.

The company did not appear to pay the ransom. It began a forensic investigation and compared network logs with physical access records before involving the FBI. Investigators traced the unauthorized activity to an internet address linked to Rhyne’s home in Warren County, New Jersey.

FBI Special Agent Timothy Lee filed a criminal complaint on Aug. 8, 2024. Rhyne was arrested Aug. 27, 2024, in Kansas City, where he had moved. He pleaded guilty April 1, 2026, in federal court in Trenton, New Jersey, before U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp.

The company provides services to businesses in aquaculture, biopharmaceuticals, chemicals, electronics, food and beverages, health care, hydrogen mobility, manufacturing, metals, oil and gas, and pulp and paper.