A CHORLEY man is facing jail after he admitted sabotaging a rival website for reuniting members of the armed forces under the user name Harry Potter.
John Thornley, aged 31, pleaded guilty last month to uploading files to the Forces Reunited website in November and December last year which caused files containing members' details to be deleted.
Thornley, of Chorley, who was in the RAF for nine years, was warned that he could be sent to prison at the sentencing hearing at Chippenham Magistrates' Court because of the gravity of the four offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
The court heard that, in November last year, the webmaster of Forces Reunited, Dominic Hayhoe, found that a member using the name Harry Potter had uploaded files into the picture area of the site.
As a result, database tables containing member information were deleted and the court was told that Mr Hayhoe lost around 1,500 registrations and would have gone out of business had he not kept back-ups.
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