U.S. man gets 32 months for demanding 20 BTC after sabotaging company network

A U.S. court has sentenced a Missouri man to 32 months in prison after he damaged a company computer network and demanded Bitcoin ransom from employees, according to Daily Hodl. Daniel Rhyne, a Missouri resident, hacked the computer network of a New Jersey industrial company in 2023 while working there as a core infrastructure engineer, deleted a network administrator account, and threatened to keep shutting down servers unless employees paid around 20 BTC, worth about $750,000 at the time, the report said. That amount is now worth about $1.667 million. In April, Rhyne pleaded guilty to charges of threatening to damage a protected computer and intentionally causing damage to a protected computer.