A New York City police sergeant pleaded guilty on Wednesday to illegally entering a federal database and giving information from a terrorist watch list to an acquaintance to use in a child-custody case in Canada.
The sergeant, Haytham Khalil, 34, was charged in November with using a computer without authorization and obtaining information belonging to a federal agency.
According to his guilty plea, Sergeant Khalil, who lives in Brooklyn, borrowed a fellow police officer’s account on Dec. 6, 2007, to obtain access, using a Police Department computer, to a state database called e-Justice. The database permits qualified state and local law enforcement authorities to get access to the terrorist watch list maintained by the F.B.I. and available through the bureau’s National Crime Information Center.
Sergeant Khalil obtained a document from the database that identified a person as being on a terrorist watch list and forwarded it to an acquaintance involved in a custody dispute in Canada, according to the guilty plea.
Sergeant Khalil pleaded guilty before Magistrate Judge Michael H. Dolinger to a misdemeanor, “accessing a computer and as a result exceeding his authority by obtaining information belonging to a department and agency of the United States.” Sentencing was scheduled for April 14.
The maximum sentence is one year in prison; a fine of the greater of $100,000 or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense; and a year of supervised release.
The guilty plea was announced by Lev L. Dassin, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan. The case was prosecuted by the public corruption unit in the United States attorney’s office and was handled by an assistant United States attorney, Loyaan A. Egal.
No comments:
Post a Comment