It’s not owning an ex-employee’s personal accounts to rummage around in their files to “protect valuable IP.”

Of course that’s illegal, and for good reason. Can you imagine a world where executives were permitted to hack anyone they like based upon mere suspicion?

I am skeptical that someone with this professed level of technical sophistication didn’t know this was illegal while doing it.

Overall I am skeptical of prison sentences for CFAA violations, but this one comes awfully close to being justified.

Certainly the conviction was.

His 'hack back' involved a SIM card hijack, which was then used to get access to the other partys Google and Dropbox accounts.

Is the jail sentence fair? Highly subjective. Personally, and given the financial repayment, I believe the sentence may be excessive, but given that I don't even live in the same part of the world as these proceedings, my context is my own.

Either way, it is an abject lesson in the potential fallibility of any persons choices, when unfortunate external circumstances come to bear. No matter how young you became a millionaire, no matter how many entrepreneurship awards you have, or how prestigious the college on your certifications, how many people have praised you as prodigious and rare, you are still entirely vulnerable to your own missteps.

Sometimes, it's factors like burnout which lead there. And you can't predict how you will react under a given new kind of stress. Stress can drive us all to very strange decisions.

In some ways, reminds me of Aaron Swartz's case.