MSP Owner, Jailed on Cybercrime Charges, Vows to Countersue

An MSP owner in Georgia faces cybercrime charges after reportedly shutting off a former client’s Microsoft Outlook functionality.

Jim Kubicek, president and chief operating officer of Kubicek Information Technologies, is free from Forsythe County (Ga.) jail on a bond of more than $13,000, but the local sheriff’s office has charged him with felonies of theft by extortion, computer theft and computer trespass.

Forsyth County News reports that Kubicek shut off IT services for the Cumming Chamber of Commerce, which ended its three-year contract with the MSP after a year. A spokesman from the sheriff’s office said Kubicek locked down the chamber’s Outlook capabilities and threatened to delete data. He went into jail Feb. 2.

Kubicek said they had refused to pay him, and his attorney has sent a letter to the chamber demanding $78,000.

The former client said it went without the email, calendar and task management functions of Outlook for 10 days. However, McCoy said there was no “breach of information or personnel files.”{ad}

“All files were absolutely safe,” McCoy told the newspaper. “There was never any exposure. We have safeguards above and beyond typical safeguards.”

Kubicek Information Technologies (KIT) has been operating since 2011 and is a Cisco Meraki, Dell Partner Direct and Microsoft Silver partner.

Kubicek has raised $1,755 in six days on a crowdfunding website. He wrote on the page that the chamber elected to use a less expensive provider and in turn defaulted on their agreement with him.

“As a result of non-payment, all services were suspended,” he said. He denies wrongdoing.

Read more on the case from our colleagues at MSPmentor.