A 2023 insider attack locked administrators out of Messer North America’s network in New Jersey and triggered a $750,000 extortion demand. The engineer responsible received 32 months in prison.
Daniel Rhyne, 59, of Kansas City, Missouri, was sentenced Sept. 28, 2026, in Trenton federal court, federal prosecutors announced Monday.
NJ.com identified the employer Tuesday as Messer North America, a Bridgewater-based supplier of industrial, medical and specialty gases. Its customers include manufacturers, food businesses and healthcare providers. Federal prosecutors have not named the company in their announcements.
The FBI’s original criminal complaint describes the loss of administrative access on Nov. 25, 2023. Administrators received password-reset notices for an administrator account and hundreds of user accounts, then discovered that the other administrator accounts had been deleted.
Rhyne worked as a core infrastructure engineer. Prosecutors said he used unauthorized remote desktop sessions to schedule account deletions, password changes and server shutdowns.
Investigators found tasks designed to delete 13 administrator accounts, change passwords for 301 user accounts and change local administrator passwords on 254 servers and 3,284 workstations. Those figures describe the planned scope; the complaint does not establish that every listed computer was successfully locked out.
An extortion email sent later that day demanded 20 bitcoin, worth about $750,000 at the time. It threatened to shut down 40 servers daily for 10 days unless payment arrived by Dec. 2, 2023.
The email also claimed that backups had been deleted, but the complaint does not independently confirm that claim.
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Rhyne pleaded guilty April 1, 2026, to extortion involving a threat to damage a protected computer and intentional damage to a protected computer. U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp imposed the sentence.
A comparable case at Iowa’s Saydel Community School District involved former IT employee Ezekiel Dean Potter using retained credentials to delete accounts and revoke staff access. Federal prosecutors said his attacks caused districtwide technology outages and suspended classes for several hours in January 2025; Potter received 21 months in prison in June 2026.
Public records do not establish how long Messer’s administrators were locked out, when their access was restored or whether the attack interrupted gas production or customer deliveries.
Messer did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
