A MAN who quit his job because his boss was slow paying him has been convicted of illegally accessing the company's computers.

Christopher Geoffrey Scott pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to four charges of unauthorised access to a computer and to a charge of damaging computer data.

Justice Alan Blow said that when Scott left the company it failed to provide him with a certificate he needed to receive Centrelink benefits.

In December 2007, Scott accessed the company's computer system four times using an old password.

On the fourth occasion, he changed a password in a bid to gain the attention of the owner.

"There is no suggestion that you gained any benefit that you were not entitled to by committing these crimes," Justice Blow said. "All that you were trying to do was to get the attention of a man who had a duty to pay you money.

"In fact, you caused him some inconvenience, in that it took him and another employee of the company some time to restore the passwords after you had interfered in the company's passwords."

The judge convicted Scott and ordered him to pay victims of crime compensation levies of $250. "In the circumstances I do not think it is appropriate to inflict any further penalty on you," he said.

Source: The Mercury