Former Ubiquiti employee arrested for stealing confidential data

A former employee of New York-based Ubiquiti Inc was arrested Wednesday on charges of stealing confidential data from the wireless technology company and using it to demand $2 million in ransom, federal prosecutors said.

Nickolas Sharp, 36, was arrested in Portland, Oregon, where he lives. He faces an indictment in federal court in Manhattan. The most serious charge against him is wire fraud, which has a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Sharp's attorney, Nick Wooldridge, could not be reached for comment.

In December 2020, Sharp downloads gigabytes of confidential data from his employer using a virtual private network to hide his location, according to the indictment. In January, he sent a ransom note to the company posing as an anonymous hacker and demanded 50 Bitcoins, then worth $1.9 million, in exchange for returning the stolen data, and revealing a purported security vulnerability in the company's systems, prosecutors said.

Sharp released some of the stolen information when the company refused, according to prosecutors.

In March, Sharp falsely told media outlets that the data had been stolen by an unidentified hacker, according to the indictment. Ubiquiti's stock fell about 20% after the publication of several news stories about the breach, wiping out $4 billion of its market capitalization.