IT business owner Bruce Kerr ordered to stand trial in higher courts for extortion and computer hacking allegations

Court documents have revealed allegations a major Queensland company with offices in Rockhampton, Brisbane and Emerald was given less than an hour to pay thousands of dollars to an IT business or have its operating systems shut down. The owner of the IT business has since been charged with extortion.

Bruce Kerr

Forty-five minutes. That’s all the notice a Rockhampton business owner allegedly gave a client to pay two invoices before carrying out a threat to cut off the client’s entire IT system.

In doing so, one of the invoices' due date was brought forward by 31 days, a court has heard.

Bruce Arthur Kerr, 54, has been charged with one count of extortion – demand with intent to gain benefit with threat of detriment; and one count of use of a restricted computer without consent and cause or intend to cause detriment, damage or gain.

Mr Kerr, who owns and operates Kerr Solutions IT on Musgrave Street, Berserker claimed, through his barrister Andrew Hoare during a No Case application hearing in Rockhampton Magistrates Court on July 5, that he legally was allowed to carry out actions against a customer which caused disruption to the customer’s $150,000 per day business operations.

The No Case application was heard by Magistrate Jason Schubert who delivered his decision on July 15.

Mr Schubert said Mr Kerr allegedly threatened to cut off client Green Steel’s computers to a server under Mr Kerr’s control if outstanding invoices, which Mr Kerr dropped off on the morning of May 27, 2021, were not paid by 2pm.

He said Mr Kerr allegedly put the threat in writing when he emailed Green Steel owner Brett Steven Green at 1.15pm on May 27, again asking for the invoices to be paid by 2pm to “guarantee uninterrupted access to all their business systems”.

Green Steel sells steel products in retail and wholesale fashion, with three branches in Queensland – Brisbane, Rockhampton and Emerald – and employs about 50 people.

Statements by Mr Green and Green Steel employee Sharon Nunn, who has worked for the company for 15 years and was the internal accountant, revealed more details about the allegations against Mr Kerr.

The statements had been filed with the court

Mr Green’s statement also revealed the company made more than $30 million in the 2020-21 financial year, equating roughly to $150,000 per day.

“In April 2021, there was a fraud situation where a client of ours had their emails hacked,” Ms Nunns’ statement reads.

“As a result, the client engaged Kerr Solutions to review the fraud.

“Kerr Solutions communicated with Green Steel during this process.”

In Mr Green’s statement, he wrote the small IT company his business had at the time no longer had the capability to service Green Steel which was growing.

He said he and other staff members met with Mr Kerr on May 11 to discuss what Mr Kerr’s IT business could offer Green Steel.

“Bruce attended the meeting and we asked him to conduct an ‘audit’ on our existing systems,” Mr Green said in his statement.

“By audit, I mean to assess the system without altering, changing or actioning anything.

“Bruce told us about all the things he could provide, software and hardware that would enable us to operate our IT systems more smoothly.

“I recall Bruce stating that in order to conduct the audit, he would require the username and password to our server, so that he could log in remotely and assess the system.”

Bruce Kerr

Mr Green said he instructed Ms Nunn to provide those to Mr Kerr and give him the go ahead for the audit.

Ms Nunn, in her statement, said she received a text message from one of the staff members the next morning about an error message and not being able to log in to an accounting and warehouse program the company ran everything for the business on.

“Over the next fortnight or so we had a number of computer problems,” she wrote.

Ms Nunn wrote Mr Kerr “offered an excuse about the system going down, that our previous IT provider” had logged into Green Steel’s system and created issues.

Mr Green wrote Mr Kerr told him the issue was because of the previous IT firm and there was illegal software on the server which then caused a system crash.

“Because our system was down my company can’t operate, we can’t sell anything and were effectively useless,” Mr Green wrote.

“I was annoyed as Bruce should not have touched or changed anything with our system and it was quite apparent that he in fact did.

“On the other hand, I needed my system back up and running as the company cannot function without it.

“During my conversation with Bruce Kerr that day I told him to do whatever he needed to do to get us back up and running.

“From memory Bruce had us back up and running the following day.”

He said Mr Kerr hand delivered two invoices about May 17 0r 18, which had a ‘discount expiry’ due dates of June 30, 2021 and May 27, 2021.

“The invoices did not state any actual terms, just a discount expiry,” Mr Green wrote.

“I closely examined the invoices and identified that the itemised services and products that (Mr Kerr) was billing us for were not what we had asked him to do.

“From then on though, there was nothing but problems with our systems.

“The system would crash all the time and we had nothing but problems with it.”

From there, Mr Green said he engaged another IT firm to carry out an audit and requested the new usernames and passwords from Mr Kerr in order to access Green Steel’s IT systems.

“I remember Bruce said something about he didn’t want to send passwords via email as he thought our previous IT firm were viewing our emails,” Mr Green wrote.

He said a meeting with Mr Kerr and some Green Steel employees took place on May 24 where things “got quite heated” and for the three days following, Green Steel’s systems were “pretty much down the entire time” with Mr Kerr allegedly getting “us back online here and there, but very much on again, off again”.

Mr Green said he asked Mr Kerr for the passwords again but Mr Kerr claimed he had forgotten to bring them.

He said on May 27, a person dropped off ‘revised’ invoices of the previous ones Green Steel had received from Kerr Solutions IT, totalling $15,000, and the due date was brought forward from June 30 to May 27.

“At some point that morning (May 27) I had a telephone call with Bruce, and we had a conversation,” Mr Green wrote in his statement.

“I don’t recall the exact words which were used although Bruce told me that if I didn’t pay his invoices by 2pm that day, he would ‘shut our system down’.

“I was not going to pay those invoices.

“Firstly, because Bruce Kerr was initially not supposed to have done any work to our system and did so without our consent.

“Secondly because the invoices included products and services which we had not requested, and thirdly, the invoices themselves were not yet due.”

Mr Green said he and Ms Nunn received an email from Mr Kerr at 1.15pm that day stating he wanted payment of invoices by 2pm that day to “guarantee uninterrupted access to all of our business systems”.

He said in the lead up to 2pm on May 27, Green Steel still had a new IT firm onsite, “working feverishly to keep the systems online”.

“It was like a movie where a bomb (was) set to go off,” Mr Green wrote.

He said at exactly 2pm, the whole system shut down.

Mr Green said he sent his staff home for the day while the new IT firm worked to get the system back up and running.

He said he lodged a report of computer hacking with police that day.

Mr Green said Green Steel has had no IT issues since engaging the new firm officially.

Mr Schubert, in handing down his decision about the No Case application, said the prosecution had to prove the defendant, for the extortion charge, made a demand with intent to gain a benefit for any person, whether the defendant or for someone else, or to cause detriment to any person other than the defendant.

He said the prosecution also had to prove the demand was made with a threat to cause a detriment to any person other than the defendant and the demand was made without reasonable cause.

“There is clear evidence the defendant made a threat to the payment of the two invoices with the intent to gain a benefit from that payment,” Mr Schubert said.

“That demand was made with a threat to shut the complainant’s (Mr Green) IT system down if payment was not made by 2pm.

“Such a threat would no doubt cause detriment to the complainant’s company.

“Indeed there is evidence the complainant’s company turned over some $150,000 each day.

“The total of the invoices were thousands of dollars more than the discount.”

Mr Schubert said there was further evidence of the threat in the recorded phone conversation between Mr Green and Mr Kerr where Mr Kerr said “I’m sorry, that was a bad decision. I’ve been under a lot of stress … it wasn’t a good management call on my part”.

“On that evidence, and having considered the elements of the charge, I’m satisfied there is sufficient evidence upon which a reasonably instructed jury could convict the defendant of this charge (extortion),” he said.

Mr Schubert, after going through what needed to be proven in the computer hacking charge and the evidence, stated he was satisfied there was again sufficient evidence for a “reasonably instructed” jury to consider the matter to find him guilty or not.

He ordered Mr Kerr to stand trial in the Rockhampton District Court at a date to be advised.

Originally published as IT business owner Bruce Kerr ordered to stand trial in higher courts for extortion and computer hacking allegations