Rajendrasinh B. Makwana, a contract worker who was sacked by Fannie Mae on October 24, pleaded 'not guilty' to the federal charge against him - that of planting a 'logic bomb' for destroying complete Fannie Mae data on its 4,000 computer servers across the country.

The 35-year-old Makwana, who was arrested on January 7 and released on January 8 on a $100,000 bond, appeared in US District Court in Baltimore on Friday. The federal charge, one count of computer intrusion, against Makwana carries up to 10 years' prison sentence.

According to public records, Makwana, a resident of Glen Allen, Virginia, is an Indian citizen who has been living in the US since 2001.

The FBI affidavit, by FBI Special Agent Jessica A. Nye, says that Makwana was working as a computer programmer with Fannie Mae, at the mortgage giant's data center in Urbana, near Washington since 2006. The company fired him for mistakenly writing programming instructions that altered the settings on the servers.

The malicious code that Makwana had planted in October, before surrendering his badge and laptop, was scheduled to hit Fannie Mae computers in January-end. The Justice Department said that it would have disrupted all the company servers, incurring a cost of millions of dollars, along with shutting down of company operations for a week.

As per the affidavit, the virus was accidentally discovered by a Fannie Mae engineer on October 29, and removed that very day.