Oilpro founder faces jail time after hacking competitor

David Kent, the founder of Oilpro, a website described as oil and gas industry’s LinkedIn, pled guilty on Monday for stealing data from a competitor, and is now facing five years in prison.

Specifically, Department of Justice said Monday that Kent “pled guilty this morning before U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote in Manhattan federal court to a superseding information, which charged him with one count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization.“

The charge, DOJ said, stemmed from Kent’s role in repeatedly hacking into a competitor’s database to steal customer information and attempting to sell Oilpro to the same company whose database Kent had hacked.

While the announcement by the DOJ does not name the competitor affected it is not hard to deduce the competitor is in fact Rigzone.com, a website Kent himself had founded and then sold in 2010 for $51 million to DHI. The Justice Department uses terms Website-1 and Website-2 when referring to the websites involved.

Rigzone is an oil and gas news, data and recruitment provider Kent had founded in 2000 and later sold to DHI Group for a reported amount of $51 million. Rigzone enables its members to create profiles, which include personal and professional information, and upload resumes.

Following the sale of Rigzone, Kent continued to serve as President of the website until September 2011, but he then left and in 2013 founded Oilpro, dubbed the LinkedIn of the oil and gas industry.

According to the charges, Kent, arrested in March 2016, had from October 2013, up to February 2016,   between October 2013 and February 2016, Kent conspired to access information belonging to “Website-1” (believed to be Rigzone) without authorization and to defraud Company-1 (DHI).

DOJ says Kent stole information from over 700.000 customer accounts.

He then used this information by inviting Rigzone’s members to join Oilpro. His final goal was to sell Oilpro to the same company he had sold Rigzone to – DHI.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said on Monday: “David Kent has admitted to his role in hacking into a competitor’s network and stealing client data in order to boost the value of Oilpro, a company he founded. Kent then attempted to sell Oilpro to the very company he hacked. Using cyber hacking to gain advantage over a competitor is not only an unfair business practice, but is a federal crime for which Kent has now pled guilty.”

FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney said on : “Today, David Kent pled guilty to intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization. This is a stern reminder to others that unauthorized access to a computer is a federal crime with severe penalties; even just a quick look at the data on the computer can lead to a prison sentence and that never leads to a leg up in business.”

Kent pled guilty Monday to one count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Offshore Energy Today staff