Fired IT employee accused of hacking Utah city emails, posting on Facebook
by Pat Reavy ksl · KSL.comEstimated read time: 3-4 minutes
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Wesley Fullenwider, a former IT technician for Vineyard, faces charges.
- He allegedly accessed and posted confidential city emails on Facebook after termination.
- Fullenwider claimed GRAMA access but didn't submit requests, investigators say.
VINEYARD — A former information technology employee who contracted with Vineyard city is accused of accessing the city's email system after he was fired and posting confidential messages between the mayor and other city employees on social media.
Wesley Fullenwider, 31, of Vineyard, was charged Wednesday in 4th District Court with unlawful computer access gaining confidential information, a third-degree felony; and two counts of unlawful computer access, a class B misdemeanor.
The investigation began in May when the Utah Attorney General's Office was asked to look into "a case regarding allegations that a former contracted information technology employee with Vineyard city, Wesley Fullenwider, (who) had gained unauthorized access to the city's email system after being terminated," according to charging documents.
Onward Technology was contracted to provide IT assistance to Vineyard. The company assigned a technician to Vineyard, who was then "given access to the client's computer system to assist with issues like password resets, computer setups, and troubleshooting matters. The Onward technicians can access client email correspondence but are not authorized to do so," prosecutors state in their charges.
In January, Vineyard city officials requested that Fullenwider be removed from his position as technician for the city, the charges state.
"Vineyard city was concerned Fullenwider had accessed Vineyard city email accounts and posted the contents online after being removed as the technician on the account," according to the charges.
Onward looked into the allegations "and discovered that Fullenwider had been accessing several Vineyard city email accounts without authorization. Fullenwider was terminated from his employment with Onward Technology on May 11," the charges state.
As the state's investigation continued, Vineyard Mayor Zack Stratton "explained that Fullenwider had posted emails to Facebook that were sent from official Vineyard city email accounts, including confidential attorney-client correspondence between the City Council and the Vineyard city attorney," according to the charges.
Investigators say Fullenwider accessed more than 700 emails.
"Although hundreds of emails had been opened, I identified five that included the Vineyard city attorney and had the disclaimer: 'attorney-client communications, protected document not for publication,'" charging documents state.
Fullenwider contended that he obtained the emails through the Government Records Access Management Act. But prosecutors state in their charges that investigators "confirmed that Fullenwider had not submitted any GRAMA requests to Vineyard city to access the emails he had posted to Facebook."
A search warrant affidavit submitted in July as part of the investigation further states that "several e-mails" accessed by Fullenwider were "between Mayor Stratton and another city councilman."
"During my interview with Mayor Stratton, he identified many of the e-mails accessed by Fullenwider accessed prior to, and after his separation with Vineyard city as being confidential and included communications between he (and) the Vineyard city attorney, communications between city employees and citizens that had financial information, and human resources records," the affidavit states.
Investigators also found several posts on the Vineyard City Community Facebook page from Fullenwider, including one that "talks about a property tax issue on a city park," according to the affidavit. The post also included a Google document that linked to an email thread between several Vineyard city officials.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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Pat Reavy
Pat Reavy interned with KSL in 1989 and has been a full-time journalist for either KSL or Deseret News since 1991. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily the cops-and-courts beat.