The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa charged Ezekiel Dean Potter, 34, with computer fraud under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030, and on June 11 a federal judge sentenced him to 21 months in prison for a campaign against the Saydel Community School District, his former employer in Des Moines.
Potter worked as a senior IT support specialist at Saydel from May 2022 through April 2023. After leaving, he kept his access credentials. Prosecutors, in their sentencing memorandum, described him as “a plague” on the district: he deleted Saydel’s Facebook page, stripped staff of educational platform access, and targeted the Apple School Manager account, locking employees out of MacBooks and iPads for about a week.
In January 2025, Potter used a Google administrator account to access Saydel’s Schoology platform, deleted an IT employee’s account, and cut classroom access for two hours. A week later he deleted nine Gmail accounts, including those of the IT director and superintendent. After Google security alerts, he switched to a VPN.
Federal investigators traced the activity to IP addresses at Potter’s subsequent employers. When he left The Printer Inc. in January 2025, he asked a coworker to wipe a USB drive from his desk. The coworker gave it to investigators. On it: spreadsheets of Saydel usernames and passwords.
Potter pleaded guilty in January 2026, with no plea agreement, under the federal indictment. He was ordered to pay $59,668.81 in restitution to Saydel and its insurer, Travelers Casualty and Surety Company.
The case prices out incomplete IT offboarding. Saydel’s $59,668 remediation bill came from a former admin who kept working credentials months after his last day — a gap federal prosecutors aren’t treating as a mere HR problem anymore.
Three years of supervised release, with mandatory device searches on reasonable suspicion, follows the prison term.
— James Okafor