Dublin resident Vamsikrishna Naganathanahalli has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for damaging computers belonging to his former employer. The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.
Naganathanahalli, aged 49, pleaded guilty on August 15, 2024, to three counts of knowingly causing the transmission of a program, information, code, or command that resulted in intentional damage without authorization to a protected computer. According to his plea agreement, he worked for MedAmerica, Inc., part of the Vituity group of companies, from October 2018 until June 2022. Vituity is based in Emeryville, California and employs physician partners and other healthcare professionals as contractors in various clinical settings.
During his employment at Vituity as a Senior HCM Architect, Naganathanahalli had access to the Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) platform used by the company for organizing human resources data for its approximately 7,000 employees. This platform contained sensitive records such as Social Security numbers and salaries.
The defendant admitted that on May 28, 2022—the day after being informed about his termination—he changed the password for another employee’s privileged HCM account without authorization. Later on September 6, 2022—after his employment had ended—he accessed this account again to change the password for a contractor's account and uploaded files with "dummy" data that replaced real data in the live production environment. This action affected about 90 percent of current and former Vituity employees' data and caused losses amounting to at least $400,930.
In addition to imprisonment, Judge Gonzalez Rogers ordered Naganathanahalli to pay $400,930 in restitution along with a $300 special assessment fee and imposed a three-year supervised release period following his prison term. He is scheduled to begin serving his sentence on July 20, 2025.
The announcement was made by United States Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey and FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge Dan Costin. The case is prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michelle J. Kane and Nikhil Bhagat with assistance from Kathy Tat following an investigation conducted by the FBI.