California Man Faces 10 Years in Prison for Allegedly Hacking Water Treatment Facility

A federal jury has indicted a California man on charges of hacking into the computer network of a water treatment facility serving 15,000 residents.

53-year-old Rambler Gallo, of Tracy, California, was a full-time employee of a private Massachusetts-based company contracted by Discovery Bay to operate the town’s wastewater treatment facility, according to the US Department of Justice.

The Discovery Bay Water Treatment Facility treats the water and wastewater systems for Tracy’s 15,000 residents.

During his employment, from July 2016 until December 2020, Gallo was the company’s “Instrumentation and Control Tech.” In his role, he was responsible for maintaining the instrumentation and computer systems used to control the facility’s electromechanical processes.

Gallo allegedly installed remote access software on the company’s private internal network which he later used to hack into Discovery Bay’s Water Treatment facility computer network.

“Then, in January of 2021, after Gallo had resigned from Company A, he allegedly accessed the facility’s computer system remotely and transmitted a command to uninstall software that was the main hub of the facility’s computer network and that protected the entire water treatment system, including water pressure, filtration, and chemical levels,” according to the DOJ.

If convicted, Gallo faces a maximum statutory penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.