A Tracy man has been federally sentenced for accessing the computer network of the Discovery Bay Water Treatment Facility and shutting it down in 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice said Monday.

Rambler Gallo, 53, will spend six months in home confinement followed by 36 months of probation for intentionally causing damage to the computer network at the water treatment facility. Gallo intentionally uninstalled the main operational system that controls the automated monitoring that protects the entire water treatment system, prosecutors said.

Gallo was a full-time employee of a private Massachusetts company listed in the indictment as “Company A,” which contracted with Discovery Bay to operate the wastewater treatment facility.

Storage tanks belonging to the Town of Discovery Bay are shown in an undated Google Street View image. Prosecutors say a Tracy man who worked as a contractor for the town’s water treatment facility deliberately sabotaged software so as “to be as disruptive as possible” and “caused a potential threat to the health and safety of the community’s water supply.” (Google image)

From July 2016 until December 2020, Gallo was the company’s instrumentation and control tech, responsible for maintaining the instrumentation and the computer systems used to control the electromechanical processes of the facility.

In his plea agreement, Gallo admitted to installing software on his own personal computer and on Company A’s private internal network that allowed him to gain remote access to the Discovery Bay facility’s computer network.

In January 2021, after resigning from Company A, Gallo accessed the computer system remotely and transmitted a command to uninstall software that was the main hub of the facility’s computer network.

Prosecutors said his actions were well thought out “to be as disruptive as possible” and “caused a potential threat to the health and safety of the community’s water supply.”

In addition to his sentence, Gallo had to forfeit his computer and must pay restitution in the amount of $44,250.

Katy St. Clair got her start in journalism by working in the classifieds department at the East Bay Express during the height of alt weeklies, then sweet talked her way into becoming staff writer, submissions editor, and music editor. She has been a columnist in the East Bay Express, SF Weekly, and the San Francisco Examiner. Starting in 2015, she begrudgingly scaled the inverted pyramid at dailies such as the Vallejo Times-Herald, The Vacaville Reporter, and the Daily Republic. She has her own independent news site and blog that covers the delightfully dysfunctional town of Vallejo, California, where she also collaborates with the investigative team at Open Vallejo. A passionate advocate for people with developmental disabilities, she serves on both the Board of the Arc of Solano and the Arc of California. She lives in Vallejo.