ATLANTA (CN) — An Alabama software engineer and avid angler who was sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing fishing reef coordinates scored a win on Wednesday when an 11th Circuit panel tossed out his conviction for theft of trade secrets because he was prosecuted in the wrong federal court.
Timothy Smith exploited a website security vulnerability to obtain the coordinates of artificial fishing reefs from a website owned by StrikeLines, a Pensacola-based company that uses sonar equipment to find reefs in the Gulf of Mexico. He also made Facebook posts offering to share the data with friends.
Although Smith was in Mobile, Alabama, when he accessed Strikelines’ computer systems, he was prosecuted in the Northern District of Florida, where StrikeLines is based. He was convicted in late 2019 of theft of trade secrets and making interstate threatening communications.
In a 20-page opinion penned by U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor, a panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court found that Smith should have been prosecuted for his theft of trade secrets in the Southern District of Alabama. His conviction has been vacated and he may be retried in Alabama federal court.
The decision comes after a December hearing in which attorneys for both sides made arguments in an attempt to untangle the thorny issue of venue in the case.
Although StrikeLines is headquartered in the Northern District of Florida, the site’s servers are in Orlando, which is in the Middle District of Florida. The company’s webpage and data are hosted by Amazon in Newark, New Jersey, in the District of New Jersey.
The panel was unconvinced by arguments from the government that venue was proper in Florida because StrikeLines constructively possessed the coordinates and controlled its data from Pensacola.
“The government does not dispute that when Smith took the coordinates from the servers in Orlando he received possession of them in Mobile,” Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote. “The government points to no evidence that the trade secrets were taken from or transported through the Northern District of Florida, and the government offers no authority for the idea that the location where the trade secrets were created is relevant to venue under section 3237(a).”
Although the ruling vacates Smith’s conviction for theft of trade secrets, the panel upheld his conviction for transmitting a threat through interstate commerce with intent to extort a thing of value.
Smith offered to delete his Facebook posts offering up StrikeLines’ data to others if the site owners provided him with coordinates for more valuable fishing spots. When he was not given the information, Smith threatened to put the post back up.
The appeals court ruled Smith’s extortion conviction was supported by evidence, including the Facebook posts and text messages Smith exchanged with Travis Griggs, one of the site owners.
The panel found that Smith knew his Facebook posts could harm Griggs’ reputation and his threat to restore them could be construed as a threat with the intent to extort more fishing coordinates.
“In those text messages, Griggs told Smith that his Facebook posts regarding the StrikeLines coordinates were ‘creating a lot of trouble’ and ‘causing actual harm to [his] reputation and . . . livelihood.’ In response, Smith said that he would take down the posts and then asked for deep grouper numbers,” Pryor wrote. “And when he did not receive deep grouper numbers the next day, Smith said the ‘[p]osts [were] going back up.’ The jury was entitled to construe this evidence as supporting a conviction because deep grouper numbers are ‘thing[s] of value.’”
Pryor was joined on the panel by U.S. Circuit Judge Britt Grant, a Donald Trump appointee, and Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Frank Hull, a Bill Clinton appointee.
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