John Pelton, 55, faced up to six months in prison on Thursday at his sentencing hearing, about four months after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of attempting to access a protected computer and a felony charge of lying to the FBI.
U.S. District Judge David Ruiz also ordered Pelton pay a $5,000 fine.
During the hearing, Pelton said he regretted the way he handled the situation, including lying to federal agents. He said he installed keyloggers— which record all keystrokes, including usernames and passwords to sensitive information— on a computer that controls the city’s power grid to get customers their power back quicker and safer.
“My intentions were good,” Pelton said. “I didn’t answer [the FBI agents’] truthfully because I was scared. I wish I hadn’t done things that way.”
Pelton said anytime power goes out, it requires operators to restore fiber-optic communications with substations and backup lines that run via phone lines.
He and his attorney Michael Goldberg said during the hearing that Pelton and a supervisor had an acrimonious relationship and the supervisor never authorized Pelton’s access to the password he needed.
Pelton said he was given a password years ago by an engineer. He said he used it often without issues but never wrote it down. The engineer later died, he said.
“It’s surprising how frequently we cannot communicate with those substations,” Pelton said.
Pelton also said that more serious damage could be done with a password he already had and that he never sought to do harm. After losing his $91,000-a-year job with the city, Pelton said he works 70 hours a week as a cross-country truck driver to support his family.
Goldberg told the judge that Pelton had no nefarious intentions and never put the city’s power grid at risk or accessed any other employees’ personal information.
Goldberg argued for probation by pointing out Pelton is a U.S. Navy veteran and had never before been arrested. Pelton also suffers from several serious health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease and sleep apnea. He suffered a heart attack recently, Goldberg said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Segev Phillips said he largely agreed with Goldberg’s arguments about Pelton’s character, but “took umbrage” with Pelton’s assertion that he had good intentions.
Phillips said that what Pelton did was “pretty bad.”
“Mr. Pelton was trusted by the people of Cleveland to help operate its power system and what he did, he did it on purpose,” Phillips said. “What he did was at best reckless and could have put a significant security risk into Cleveland Public Power’s operations.”
Pelton worked as an operator starting in 2017 until the city fired him February 2021, when a city investigation found Pelton posted photos of CPP’s Security Control and Data Acquisition computer screens on a Facebook group with 2,300 former Navy operators. He also shared information about CPP’s security operation and infrastructure and criticized the city for using outdated technology.
The FBI investigated and found Pelton researched and ordered keyloggers, and that he installed them on CPP’s computers on Jan. 12, 2021. Pelton denied knowing what a keylogger was when confronted by the FBI.
“Good people do bad things, and bad people do good things,” Phillips said. “If you look at Mr. Pelton, there’s not much bad there.”
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