An Orange County woman fired from her role as a probation officer used her continued access to a court database — access she wasn’t supposed to have — to leak confidential information to a drug trafficking group, according to deputies.
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Crystal Gaynell Ann Lawson, 32, was arrested Thursday on over 100 felony counts of computer crimes – unauthorized access. She had previously been employed as a juvenile probation officer at the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice until she was terminated in late 2022 following her arrest on a battery charge, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
But because of an apparent clerical error, Lawson mistakenly maintained access to a confidential court database, the Comprehensive Case Information System, which is not public and only accessible by law enforcement, court and government officials.
She used it to warn members of a fentanyl-trafficking group that her father was associated with that investigators were closing in and had secured arrest warrants for them, according to the release.
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Between January and May, Lawson unlawfully accessed the database 106 times to search for active criminal cases that involved members of the group and leaked to them non-public documents, including active arrest warrants, resulting in the loss of evidence and one person fleeing to avoid prosecution, the release said. That person was later apprehended.
Sources told law enforcement that her father bragged to members of the group that she could find out when people had warrants due to her access in the criminal justice system.
One example of something Lawson looked up in the database was a case involving a man who claimed to have bought a stolen electric bicycle from her father. She used her access to look at the man’s file to see what he had said about her father’s involvement so she could warn him, according to her arrest warrant affidavit.
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