A former NSA employee who took secret files home with him in an effort to get promoted has been jailed after they were allegedly stolen by Russian spies.
Nghia Hoang Pho, 68, from Maryland, was sentenced to five and a half years Tuesday after earlier pleading guilty to willful retention of national defense information.
Pho was working as a software developer for the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations branch, which hacks into foreign computer networks, at Fort Meade when he began taking the files home in 2010.
Nghia Hoang Pho, 68, was working for the NSA at Fort Meade (pictured) when he began taking documents home as part of an effort to get promoted in 2010
During his sentencing on Tuesday, Pho – who had been working for the agency since 2006 – said he became frustrated after being passed over for promotion.
While the rest of his team were promoted after a project they worked on won an award from the agency’s head, he was left behind.
Pho said his supervisor told him that his ’employee performance assessment is not good enough’ and ‘it’s not your turn right now’.
In an effort to do more work and improve his resume, Pho took documents home over the course of five years ending in 2015, when he was charged.
His goal was to get promoted before he retired.
At some point during that time it is believed that hackers working for the Russian government broke into his computer and stole some documents, the New York Times previously reported.
Russian hackers working for the state are believed to have stolen some of the documents from Pho’s computers some time before he was charged in 2015
Hackers are thought to have exploited a loophole in security software provided by Kaspersky Labs, a top Russian company, to lift the files.
It is not clear if Kaspersky was aware of the hack, though the firm has said it does not work with the Russian government in the past.
Prosecutors had asked for an eight year sentence, arguing that documents found at two of Pho’s homes went well beyond areas he was working in.
Pho was given yearly training on handling classified information and his argument that he didn’t know what he was doing is ‘flatly inconsistent with the facts’, attorney Thomas Windom said in remarks reported by the Baltimore Sun.
The charges carry a maximum penalty of ten years behind bars, which prosecutors had agreed not to seek as part of Pho’s guilty plea.
In Pho’s defense the court heard from one of his four children, his best friend, and wife Anna, who said he was ‘the main provider… emotionally and financially.’
Pho, who had been allowed to stay at home before his sentencing, will begin his jail term at a medium-security federal prison in Cumberland in January.
After two years, the remainder will be served on supervised release.