MSP Charged With Extortion After Cutting IT Services for Non-Payment
A Georgia MSP owner is free on $13,555 bond after being charged with allegedly shutting off IT access to a client who terminated a three-year services contract after one year, then stopped paying, according to a report in Forsyth County News.
James “Jim” Darian Kubicek, 48, was arrested Friday on felony charges of extortion, computer theft and computer trespass, following a complaint by the Cumming-Forsyth County Chamber of Commerce.
Kubicek’s firm, Kubicek Information Technologies, provided IT services to the chamber of commerce, according to Kubicek and officials from the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office.
When the chamber engaged another firm towards the end of 2016 and stopped paying Kubicek, the MSP allegedly cut off chamber users’ access to Office 365, including all emails, calendars, contacts and task management tools.
The chamber remained without Office 365 for 10 days, until the data could be restored by the new MSP.
“All of the files on our server were secured and there were no breaches of personal information, credit card numbers, etc.,” chamber president and CEO James McCoy is quoted as telling the newspaper. “In fact, the server was taken offline immediately until we were certain it could be secured.”
Kubicek insists he did nothing wrong.
He acknowledged withdrawing sponsorship deals from the chamber and that he “shut off the services they refused to pay for,” according to the Forsyth County News.
“I do that with any client that refuses to pay their bill,” Kubicek is quoted as saying.
The MSP accused the chamber of quitting the contract early in order to go with a less expensive IT services deal.
Kubicek said he has hired a civil lawyer to pursue $78,000, which he alleges he’s owed by the chamber.
“I have absolutely no doubt that these trumped-up charges will be dismissed,” he said.
Kubicek is scheduled to appear in court on March 10.
In the meantime, the episode has caused the chamber to pay closer attention to its IT services.
“We made improvements to ensure that if any changes to ownership of accounts with Microsoft Office 365 or any of our IT accounts or our domain are made in the future, that we are notified,” McCoy said. “And we will conduct regular audits of those accounts.”
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Seems reasonable to shut off
Seems reasonable to shut off services for non-payment and breach of contract. Try that with your cellphone company, power company, or any other large entity. They only temporarily got away with this because the provider is not a large corporation. A contract is not just an agreement between two or more counter-parties, it also creates legal obligations. If you break a contract and walk away from your obligations under a legally binding agreement, you will be leaving yourself open to legal action.
Except when there is a clause
Except when there is a clause in the contract of termination for cause. Sounds like the chamber terminated for cause and this guy got pushy, hence the charges. No way a local PD would arrest someone without investigating.
Getting “Pushy” is not cause.
Getting “Pushy” is not cause. We have had clients who upgrade their equipment with a competing vendor three months into a yearly renewal and think we’ll just walk away from the $500.00 worth of labor and parts we put into a machine. Failure to perform is not alleged in this article.
And where do you see cause
And where do you see cause for termination in the story? I see they went for a cheaper service. I seriously doubt that is cause for lawful termination.
Is t his not a fair action if
Is t his not a fair action if it is detailed in the contract to allow this and the provider acts within the rules. A gas or electric company would cut you off after a certain period for non payment as would any firm. In fact online web apps typcially cut you off the day of renewal if you have not renewed/paid for the next term.
I doubt changing consultants
I doubt changing consultants for a discount is “for cause.” Yhere must be more to this.
We may have to wait a bit for
We may have to wait a bit for clarifications on that one but based on the information in the article, he did nothing wrong if the client was still under contract. The article doesn’t say if there was a valid cause for termination so who knows what happened. The fact that the police arrested the owner on felony charges can also indicate that the guy did something else that was very bad or that the chamber of commerce had very good connections with the police department and used them…
What the article doesn’t
What the article doesn’t state is that he used crypto to make access to their data impossible. We are local to his market. That being said the county is 3 miles North of Atlanta and still operates at will like it’s 1950.
This stick-em-up will cook
This stick-em-up will cook his goose. When this is all over he will be lucky to get some type of probation. Definitely looking at a name change with this type of press. Article mentions this is how he rolls meaning there are more angry ex-clients out there. How long before some lawyer puts a call out for them.
The company never did any
The company never did any such thing as use crypto to prevent anything. You sir are full of lies.
I believe the Chamber of
I believe the Chamber of Commerce should serve the interest of the SMALL BUSINESS community, right? Just as suggested earlier by one of the respondents, let’s wait for their reason(s) for dumping his contract. Whichever way it goes, I hope he was informed of the termination and the replacement before being arrested.
I believe the Chamber of
I believe the Chamber of Commerce should serve the interest of the SMALL BUSINESS community, right? Just as suggested earlier by one of the respondents, let’s wait for their reason(s) for dumping his contract. Whichever way it goes, I hope he was informed of the termination and the replacement before being arrested.
Live up to your contractual
Live up to your contractual obligations and be accountable…then complete wastes of time and money like this would never happen.
Sounds like an avoidable
Sounds like an avoidable mess. The more relevant issue is that access to the client-owned data was prevented, similar to putting a lock on someone’s house without going through the legal motions first. We can identify with being screwed, but the better thing to do would have been to terminate them earlier if they were slow-pay/no-pay rather than escalating. Also, learn from the telecoms’ issues and do 1-year terms rather than trying to bind a client for a long time or at least allow for an opt-out. If you are doing great service they will stay if they are good clients, and if they run on money then best to put them in the rear-view. Bad clients are the results of bad decisions by IT Providers.
This is a Professional IT
This is a Professional IT Service Provider that I have worked with along side in the past. As a good service provider they have a solid contract in place. They also would have a continuance clause for the end of the contract and need notification that the client will be moving to someone else, 90 days is normal. They also I am sure have a line about if a client doesn’t pay on time then xyz will happen to their services.
Also even if they did provide their o365 and were paying for it etc. Then if you shut this off it does not take 10 days to get it back online. Even if you have to change the domain etc. it doesn’t take that long. Even if everything is fully deleted on the admin panel side, MS can retrieve it.
Sounds to me like the Chamber is trying to blame them for a bad decision in moving to a company that is incompetent.
“Bad clients are the results
“Bad clients are the results of bad decisions by IT Providers.”
That is a ridiculous statement! Has your situation ever changed that made the whole situation you were in different with different outcomes? Time brings situations and situation change over time.