Daniel Rhyne, 59, a former core infrastructure engineer for a New Jersey‑based industrial company, pleaded guilty on April 1, 2026, to charges of extortion and intentional damage to a protected computer. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey says Rhyne, then a New Jersey resident, planned a hacking scheme in November 2023 that involved unauthorized remote‑desktop sessions and scheduled tasks designed to delete administrator accounts, change passwords and shut down servers. On November 25, 2023, he deployed the tasks and sent an email threatening further shutdowns unless he received about 20 bitcoin, roughly $750,000 at the time. Rhyne faces a maximum of five years for the extortion charge and ten years for the computer‑damage charge, plus fines up to $250,000 or twice the loss. The FBI Newark and Kansas City field offices led the investigation, and the case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Taj Moore.
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