A former Juvenile probation officer has been charged with over 100 felony charges after she gained access to a government database.
Investigations alleged that she leaked court and government sensitive data records to people who were facing drug trafficking probe.
Crystal Gaynell Ann Lawson, 32, is charged with 113 felony counts of cyber crimes, including unauthoritised access and one count of unlawful use of a two-way communication device, as court records show.
The arrest warrant affidavit was filed in Orange County’s Ninth Judicial Circuit.
Each unauthoritised access to confidential documents carries an imprisonment of up to five years.
If rounded in total, that makes up to 60 years that Lawson would serve behind bars.
The database she accessed, used to spy on an ongoing fentanyl trafficking probe, then leaked confidential arrest warrants to the drug cartel, with which her own father had ties.
After appearing before a court on Friday afternoon, her bond was fixed at $1.14 million. That’s $10,000 for each count.
Lawson was employed by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice in February 2022.
As per her job description, she was provided access to the CCIS database. Although she was fired later that year after an arrest but her database access was not removed.
Orange County Corrections records available on its portal list Lawson’s case status as “presented” and show multiple entries for “offence against computer users.”
The leaked data resulted in lost evidence, unrecovered assets, and at least one suspect to flee arrest, though the authorities later took him into custody.
