A Crown Prosecution Service officer who leaked sensitive files about complex police investigations that were passed to members of organised crime gangs has been jailed for six years.
Rachel Simpson, 39, from Newport in south Wales, repeatedly accessed CPS and crown court computer systems searching for information about investigations into major police drugs operations and money laundering.
Some files she leaked got into the hands of a drugs gang and made them realise they were under police surveillance, prompting them to change the way they operated.
Other information reached lawyers acting for a criminal who was appealing against his conviction for his part in a £2m cocaine conspiracy.
Simpson, who had worked for the CPS in south Wales since 2003, was caught in 2020 after French and Dutch police cracked an encrypted messaging platform being used by serious criminals they were investigating and spotted a document she had leaked.
She resigned and has admitted two counts of misconduct in a public office and 29 counts of unauthorised access of a computer system.
Sentencing Simpson at Cardiff crown court, Mrs Justice Jefford said her persistence and the serious nature of the criminals who could have benefited were aggravating factors.
The judge said she had had a relationship with an unnamed man in 2012-13. A year later he had asked her “out of the blue” to look up some information for him. He kept asking her to look up other things. “You wanted his attention and would do anything he asked,” the judge said.
The court was told that Simpson was a single mother who suffered from depression and was autistic.
But the judge said: “All of these offences were of a high level of seriousness. You were well aware that what you were doing what was illegal.
“It was a repeated and gross breach of the trust your employer had in you. The public, the courts and all those engaged in the criminal justice system are entitled to expect the highest levels of integrity from the CPS. What you did fundamentally undermines public confidence in that integrity.”
Edward Hetherington, defending, said Simpson’s motive had not been financial gain. He said she had vulnerabilities that may have been exploited.
Simpson has not identified the man who had asked her to look up information. In one conversation between suspects that investigators found on an encrypted platform, a “busy fellow down in Newport” who “gets us CPS papers” was referred to.
