Attorney Accused of Unlawfully Accessing E-Mails of County Official

A Raleigh lawyer faces charges of hacking into the official e-mail account belonging to her ex-boyfriend, a senior Wake official, some 1,400 times or more between August and December 2007.

Christina Paulette Medlin, 31, faces legal charges on one count of committing severe crime of tapping government computers. According to her lawyer, the e-mail account was that of Joseph K. Durham, the Deputy County Manager.

Collin Cook, attorney for Medlin told News & Observer that his client acknowledged gaining entry to an e-mail account of the Wake County. According to Cook, Medlin, who had a romantic relationship with Durham, accessed his PC to find about e-mails that other women might be writing to him. Cook says the incident has embarrassed Medlin. Wavy published this on April 17, 2008.

Scott W. Warren, attorney of the county, said that as soon as the county officials became aware of the account breach, they notified the Raleigh Police Department, which launched an investigation in December. Charlotte published this on April 17, 2008.

As per the April 4 search warrant, Medlin is accused of penetrating a government PC without authorization from August 14, 2007 to December 5, 2007.

Logs compiled at the IT department of the county and submitted to The News & Observer as per a request for public records show that Durham's government e-mail was tapped 1,409 times from external PCs with IP addresses tracing to Medlin.

As per other latest news, New Zealand Police have terminated their hunt for the individual behind stealing e-mails of Don Brash, former leader of National Party. The investigation found that e-mails written during October 2003 to November 2005 were stolen from Dr. Brash. However, there were no further thefts since November 2005. But later in 2006, Nicky Hager used extracts from 475 different Brash e-mails to frame the groundwork for the book 'The Hollow Men' that he authored.

According to experts on Internet security, using technology to gossip about a lover or mistress is rising. However, only some of the cases reach the court as such intrusions are mostly difficult to spot, and clues are hard to find.

Related article: Attorney General Provides Tips To Evade phishing Scams

» SPAMfighter News - 4/22/2008