Rajendrasinh Makwana, a 35-year-old, pleaded not guilty in US District Court in Baltimore to one count of computer intrusion. He is an Indian citizen who has lived in the US since at least 2001, according to public records, but he was fired on October 24 from his computer programming job at Fannie Mae's data center in Urbana, where he had worked since 2006.

 

Makwana was fired for erroneously writing programming instructions two weeks earlier that changed settings on the servers. However, Fannie Mae did not cut his computer access, and he afterwards tried to damage Fannie Mae's computer network by entering malicious code. Another company employee discovered the malicious instructions by chance on October 29, and the virus was removed that day, before doing any harm.

 

Makwana was arrested on January 7 and he was released on a $100,000 bond on January 8, according to court records. He was one of 10 to workers with access to the server from which the virus would have launched. The charge against him carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

 

Fannie Mae and Freddie mac, both publicly traded, were created by Congress in order to inject money into the home-loan market by purchasing mortgages and bundling them into securities for sale to investors. However, both of them were taken over by their government regulator in September, after mounting mortgage losses put them in distress.