Editor’s note: We were contacted by Vlad Yanpolsky in 2023 to say that he disputed parts of Met statement. Mr Yanpolsky said he resigned and was not dismissed and he had no relevant ‘specialist knowledge’.

 

A Weybridge man who "deliberately sabotaged" the computer system of a company he was fired from has been jailed.

45-year-old Vladimir Yanpolsky of Hungerford Square, Weybridge, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years' imprisonment at Kingston Crown Court on yesterday (January 22).

He was found guilty of an offence under section 3(1) of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in December.

The Metropolitan Police said that their suspicions about Yanpolsky were raised after his former employers' computer system crashed catastrophically in 2017.

"On 5 March 2017, a London-based IT services company experienced a critical system failure, and enquiries revealed that these had been caused by network intrusions from someone gaining access remotely.

"Suspicions turned to Yanpolsky, whose contract at the company had been terminated months before," a Met spokesperson said.

The Met’s Cyber Crime Unit were tasked with investigating and found that the IP addresses linked to the hack on the company’s computer network at the time of the crash could be traced back to Yanpolsky's home address and new place of work.

Yanpolsky was arrested on March 8 2017, released under investigation and subsequently charged on On September 7 2018, having previously denied his involvement.

Detective Chief Inspector Kirsty Goldsmith from the Cyber Crime Unit described how the Weybridge man used "specialist knowledge" against a company who had fired him in "acrimonious circumstances":

"Yanpolsky used the specialist knowledge he had about a company he was fired from in acrimonious circumstances, and deliberately sabotaged its IT operations," DCI Goldsmith said.

"Since his arrest, he has shown no remorse for the consequences of his actions.

"I am proud of the tenacity, dedication and skill of the officers during a painstaking investigation, who presented strong technical evidence to the court leading to this conviction,” she added.