JPMorgan Retirement Plan Services Sues Former Exec Over Security Breach
Freeman handed in his resignation into the Kansas
City-headquartered company in mid November after nearly 14
years with the company, and the suit alleges that he spent
hours the night before he left printing files that
contained confidential client information, the Kansas
City Star reported.
The suit seeks a restraining order against Freeman as well
as unspecified damages for breach of contract, breach of
fiduciary duty and conversion, and seeks damages for
violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Such actions against employees have often been brought
under state trade secret laws, which require an employer to
show that a employee misappropriated legally protected
trade secrets.However, JPMorgan is invoking the Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act in Freeman’s case, which requires that
an employer show that the confidential information in
question was stored in a protected computer and that the
employer took steps to protect it, according to the
newspaper.
The company said that it went through great lengths to
secure its systems that store client information, and that
computer logs show that Freeman had viewed 37 confidential
files on the day before he left and that a diskette he had
asked to be created for a prospective client was missing.
At first, Freeman denied taking anything but 14 boxes of
his own information, but later brought the missing
diskette and the boxes back to JPMorgan. However, he
refused to sign a statement attesting to why he took the
files and to make other comments about his activities, the
newspaper reported.