A Mount Pleasant woman has pleaded guilty to stealing e-mail from a company after she was fired and using the information against her former employer.
According to the office of U.S. Attorney Anna Mills Wagoner, Teresa Gamble Treadaway, 49, pleaded guilty in federal court in Greensboro to one count each of wire fraud, computer fraud and unlawful access to stored communication for commercial advantage.
Treadaway faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, and a federal judge can order her to make restitution to her former company ECOFLO.
Based in Greensboro, ECOFLO provides industrial and waste management services. According to Wagoner’s office, Treadaway began monitoring e-mail of her former co-workers and company officials shortly after she was fired from her sales job in October 2003.
“She was able to do this by the Internet because she knew that ECOFLO did not require its employees to change” the generic password assigned to them by the company computer system, federal prosecutors said.
She monitored ECOFLO e-mail through 2004 and 2005, even after she went to work for a competing company.
In June 2005, federal prosecutors say, Treadaway intercepted an ECOFLO bid to remove chemical waste from the tanks of a company in Columbia, S.C., and, using that information, was able to submit the winning bid for that work for her company.
When FBI agents executed a search warrant at her Mount Pleasant home in May 2006, they found the ECOFLO bid documents and other company e-mail.
A judge is scheduled to sentence Treadaway Nov. 18 in Greensboro. Treadaway does not have a publicly listed phone number and could not be reached for comment.