

A low-level State Department employee pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to charges of accessing hundreds of confidential passport files, including those of celebrities, actors, athletes, politicians and family members -– and he likely faces little to no jail time.

Dwayne Cross, 41, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, became the department's second employee to plead guilty to federal criminal charges of unlawfully accessing a computer.

In September, Lawrence Yontz, 48, of Arlington, Virginia, a research analyst, pleaded guilty (.pdf) to the same charge in a political scandal in the State Department's Passport Information Electronic Records System. Yontz was sentenced last month to one year of supervised release and ordered to perform 50 hours of community service.

Cross faces a similar fate at his March 23 scheduled sentencing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. According to a plea agreement (.pdf), the government has instructed the federal judge presiding over the case that the penalty should range from no prison time up to six months.

As part of the department-wide security breach, the passport files of Barack Obama, John McCain and Hillary Clinton were illegally accessed. The department declined to name the identities of the people Cross unlawfully accessed. But Cross confessed that he accessed the files out of idle curiosity.

A July government audit (.pdf) has found "weaknesses, including a general lack of policies, procedures, guidance and training" within the State Department's passport bureau.

The State Department's passport system maintains data on 127 million passports and can be accessed by more than 20,000 employees. Cross was an administrative assistant in the Bureau of Consular Affairs at the State Department between 2001 and 2008.

Both Yontz and Cross pleaded guilty to unauthorized access to a State Department computer in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1030(a)(2)(B).

Photo: berbercarpet

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