Editor’s note: According to court documents supplied by Scott Bodwell, the charges against him were dismissed on March 6, 2015.
BRUNSWICK
A grand jury indicted a 51- year-old Brunswick man who police accuse of stealing documents from computers at the local business where he worked.
Scott Bodwell, 51, of Ocean Drive, Brunswick, was indicted Dec. 8 on a charge of felony aggravated criminal invasion of computer privacy for a crime that Brunswick police say occurred more than two years ago.
Bodwell’s attorney, Richard Berne of Portland, said Wednesday that the indictment is “ entirely without merit,” and that Bodwell did “absolutely nothing wrong.”
In May 2010, Brunswick police detectives executed a search warrant at Bodwell’s Ocean Drive home and seized several computers they said could link Bodwell to theft of intellectual property from his previous employer, Resource Systems Engineering Inc.
According to an affidavit and request for a search warrant filed by then-Lt. Mark Waltz of the Brunswick Police Department, RSE owner Charles Wallace Jr. alleged that Bodwell stole data the day before he quit his job at RSE after 22 years of employment. Wallace said Bodwell then used that data to lure RSE clients to his new firm, Bodwell Enviroacoustics LLC.
The affidavit states that after Bodwell quit with no notice the morning of Nov. 9, 2009, company officials suspected he might have taken files. They hired a company to make forensic images of the hard drive. The images allegedly show that Bodwell entered the building late the night before he quit and accessed files on the computer assigned to him.
According to a computer consultant hired by RSE, an unauthorized copy of the files, containing “RSE-owned drawings, contracts, invoices, client negotiations, reports, spreadsheet files … and legal correspondence … was created.”
Three days after Bodwell left RSE, according to court documents, he filed with the state of Maine as RS Bodwell PE, LLC.
Wallace told Waltz that the data could be worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” and that two of RSE’s major clients — one a wind farm and the other a natural gas pipeline company — left RSE for Bodwell’s firm in January 2010.
But Berne said Wednesday that he is confident Bodwell will be exonerated.
“We believe that this indictment is entirely without merit and never should have been brought by the district attorney’s office,” Berne told The Times Record. “We are confident that when all the evidence is presented, it will be abundantly clear that Mr. Bodwell did absolutely nothing wrong here and, in fact, acted consistent with his obligations to his client as a professional engineer.”
“As most members of the community are aware, Mr. Bodwell is and always has been an upstanding, honest and lawabiding member of his community and he did nothing in connection with this case that is inconsistent with the sterling reputation that he and his family have built over the many years they have lived there,” Berne continued.
In June 2010, Berne declined to comment when asked whether Bodwell took the files, saying only, “One of the critical elements in a case like this is whether someone acted with criminal intent. If this person had a good-faith basis for believing they had a right to possess the property or an ownership in the property, then no crime has been committed.”
A phone call on Wednesday to Wallace was not returned.
bbrogan@timesrecord.com
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