The head of an IT company from Maryland, according to the US Department of Justice (DoJ), forged documents on obtaining a Tier IV data center reliability certificate in Beltsville (Maryland). The Register reports that this was done for the sake of a contract to host equipment from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Although Uptime Institute issues such certificates only after verification, accused Deepak Jain chose a different path. His company, according to authorities, provided false certification documents to the SEC. Moreover, the accused not only corrected the documents of the Uptime Institute, but “invented” a certain organization, the Uptime Council, which, it seems, does not exist at all.
The US Department of Justice said it will not tolerate schemes that compromise the security of government data. How authorities figured out that Jain literally made up the certification is not said, but it is reported that the SEC encountered problems with security, cooling and power supply in the data center. At one time, a company employee prevented an inspection of the Beltsville Data Center before the contract was awarded in 2012. After the deal expired in 2018, the SEC refused to renew the agreement. In total, the Commission spent $10.7 million on the services of this data center.
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For such “ingenuity,” Jain faces 10 years in prison for each of the six counts of gross fraud, as well as up to five years in connection with the false statements charge. Although the company itself is not named in court documents, there is information on the Internet that Deepak Jain is the founder and CEO of Beltsville-based AiNET (it is the company that operates the data center). However, there is no evidence yet that the entire company as a whole is involved in fraud. At the same time, the AiNET website repeatedly mentions that its data center has Tier IV certification.
Lawyers representing Jain told reporters that the client denies wrongdoing and said his company complied with all terms of its contract with the SEC and there was no evidence of data loss or compromise due to the data center owner. The case is notable because financial fraud, including those related to data centers, occurs quite often, but little is known about such brazen attempts to forge Tier certificates.