Fired Toyota coder trashes systems, steals data

 After being fired last week, a contract computer programmer at Toyota Motor Manufacturing intentionally "sabotaged" and crashed the company's supplier computer network and downloaded highly confidential information, Toyota has alleged in a federal lawsuit.

In a complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Lexington against Ibrahimshah Shahulhameed, the automaker said, "If this information were disseminated to competitors or otherwise made public, it would be highly damaging to Toyota and its suppliers, causing immediate and irreparable damage."

Shahulhameed "sabotaged various internal programs," causing the Toyotasupplier.com network to crash, and he "potentially downloaded proprietary and confidential information for his own improper use," the complaint said. Shahulhameed lived in Georgetown, where Toyota has its Camry assembly plant, the complaint said.