In 5 BBY, a security compromise took place at the Transportation Ministry central offices, situated within Capital City on the planet Lothal. This compromise was executed by Merei Spanjaf, a skilled slicer who was romantically involved with Zare Leonis, an Imperial cadet secretly sympathetic to the rebellion. Leonis was actively searching for his sister, Dhara Leonis, a student at Academy for Young Imperials on Lothal, who had mysteriously vanished the year before. Due to their strong bond, Spanjaf agreed to assist Leonis in his quest to locate his sister.
Spanjaf had created a specialized software application that enabled her to gain unauthorized entry into the Empire's less secure data systems on Lothal. Despite this, she still couldn't access any confidential files related to Dhara. While attending the Vocational School for Institutional Security (V-SIS), Spanjaf encountered a fellow student named Jix Hekyl who connected her with Yahenna Laxo, a criminal leader operating the Gray Syndicate, a local criminal organization. Laxo consented to provide Spanjaf with three snooper programs in exchange for her services as a courier. After being informed by her father, Gandr Spanjaf, about the vulnerability of government facilities to physical breaches, she devised a strategy to infiltrate the Transportation Ministry headquarters, which served as a clandestine entry point to the Imperial data network on Lothal.
Disguised as a student from Phelarion School, Merei gained access to the Transportation Ministry headquarters under the pretense of conducting fundraising activities. Faking a need for the restroom, Merei strategically placed the snoopers in various locations throughout the building. This security breach brought Merei closer to achieving her objective of uncovering information about Dhara. Aided by Zare and the rebel operative Dev Morgan, Merei acquired an Imperial decoder, granting her access to Dhara Leonis' records. After fabricating a false Imperial Security Bureau profile, Merei discovered that Dhara had been forcibly recruited into a clandestine Imperial initiative known as Project Harvester.
Regardless of Merei's best efforts, her unauthorized data access did not go unnoticed. While two of the snooper programs had self-deleted, Imperial data security specialists were able to isolate the third snooper as it had been installed on a network terminal with a malfunctioning chronometer. Merei's challenges intensified when she discovered that her mother, Jessa, had been assigned to lead the Imperial team tasked with investigating the breach. With Jix's assistance, Merei attempted to evade the Imperial investigators by manipulating her school photograph, attempting to eliminate her repeater service account, and implicating the Gray Syndicate. Following the arrest of her friend Jix, Merei and her parents were compelled to flee off-world and seek refuge with the assistance of Old Jho and the Spectres.
During the Age of the Empire, Merei Spanjaf and Zare Leonis were relatively new residents of the planet Lothal, their families having relocated to capitalize on the employment opportunities presented by the Galactic Empire. Merei and Zare were close companions at the Junior Academy of Applied Sciences in Capital City on Lothal, where they were teammates on the school's grav-ball team. However, their faith in the Empire diminished as they witnessed its increasingly oppressive policies towards Lothal and the massacre of farmers in the Westhills region.
Leonis's disillusionment reached its peak with the mysterious disappearance of his sister, Dhara Leonis, a prominent cadet at the Academy for Young Imperials. Zare and his mother, Tepha Leonis, rejected the official Imperial explanation that Dhara had run away, suspecting instead that the Empire was concealing the truth about her fate. The following year, Zare initiated a plan to infiltrate the Imperial Academy to uncover the truth about his sister's disappearance. He received support in his investigation from Merei, who was a proficient slicer with aspirations of becoming an information-security expert.
While studying at the Vocational School for Institutional Security, Merei dedicated her spare time to penetrating the Imperial data network on Lothal. Despite her slicing skills utilizing the datapad, Merei encountered difficulties in breaching the data network due to the increasingly stringent security protocols. Through a classmate named Jix Hekyl, Merei learned about the potential of using snoopers, software designed to record information and transmit it to an external source. With Hekyl's assistance, Merei established contact with a criminal organization known as the Gray Syndicate. The Syndicate's leader, Yahenna Laxo, agreed to supply her with three snoopers in exchange for her services as a courier. Aware that her parents Gandr and Jessa Spanjaf were information security contractors employed by the Empire, Merei concealed her activities from them.
After learning from her parents that Imperial institutions on Lothal were susceptible to physical intrusions and that the Transportation Ministry's database was linked to the entire Imperial data network, Merei resolved to infiltrate the Transportation Ministry's headquarters on Lothal and deploy her snoopers there. To gain entry to the building, Spanjaf decided to impersonate Kinera Tiree, a student at the esteemed Phelarion School and the daughter of the education minister Fondana Tiree. Spanjaf would claim to be visiting the Transportation Ministry to sell raffle tickets for a charitable cause. To support this deception, Merei acquired three network drives, a book of flimsi receipts, and a used T-shirt from Phelarion School.
During a break in her school schedule, Merei initiated her plan and visited the Transportation Ministry. Presenting herself as Kinera, Merei entered the reception area and stated that she was selling raffle tickets to raise funds for Clone Wars veterans. Leveraging her "mother's" influential position within the Imperial bureaucracy, Merei persuaded the receptionist to allow her to set up a stall in the cafeteria without requiring an appointment or pass. After "waiting" in the cafeteria for a short time, Merei proceeded to various locations throughout the building and planted the network drives containing her snoopers.
She placed the first network drive on a sink in the men's restroom. After visiting a break station and obtaining a cup of caf, she positioned her second drive on the industrial carpeting next to the counter. Merei then returned to the cafeteria, where she placed the third drive under a table before exiting the room. Before she could depart from the Transportation Ministry, she was approached by a female civilian who purchased a raffle ticket from her. The woman agreed to buy five tickets (totaling 15 credits) upon learning that the winner would receive a complimentary vacation at Boranda, a full day at [Old City Spa](/article/old_city_spa], a new datapad, and other small items. After selling more tickets to the woman's colleagues, Merei earned nearly 100 credits.
With the assistance of the snoopers, Merei obtained the access codes of an Imperial personnel manager and a systems coordinator. The coordinator's access code allowed Merei to enable the personnel manager to create new IDs with complete security clearance. Implementing the next phase of her plan, Merei created a fraudulent Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) inspector account with unrestricted access to the Imperial data network. Merei shared this information with her boyfriend Zare during a visit to the Imperial Academy on Visiting Day. When Zare expressed concerns about her potential capture, Merei assured him that she had deactivated the snoopers after using them. Once inactive, they were nearly impossible to detect and would self-erase by the end of the week.
Using her fabricated ISB inspector account, Merei was able to access more files, including those of Zare and her former classmate Beck Ollet, who had been arrested following an attack on an Imperial mining facility. However, when Merei attempted to access Dhara's records, she discovered that she could not view the missing cadet's file without a ZX-5 access disk, a military-grade decoder. Merei overcame this obstacle with the help of Zare and Dev Morgan, a rebel operative within the Imperial Academy. Working together, Zare and Morgan stole the decoder from the Imperial Headquarters on Lothal. After using the decoder to intercept an Imperial convoy, Morgan's rebel comrades transferred the decoder to Merei.
Having obtained the decoder, Merei was able to access Dhara's confidential special assessment file. She quickly learned that Dhara had been identified as Force-sensitive by the Grand Inquisitor, who enrolled her in Project Harvester. This highly classified project was managed from a secret facility connected to the Arkanis Academy. Merei shared this information with Zare, who was overjoyed to learn that his sister was still alive.
By breaching the Transportation Ministry's database, Merei assisted Zare Leonis in progressing towards his goal of finding his sister Dhara. However, Merei's challenges were far from over. Despite Merei's best efforts, the data breach was detected by the Imperial authorities, who contracted her mother, Jessa, to lead the investigation. While two of the snooper programs had self-deleted, the third had been loaded into a network terminal with a defective chronometer. Consequently, the snooper's timer never activated, and Jessa's team was able to isolate it and preserve its code. This small piece of evidence allowed Jessa to begin tracing back to the source of the transmissions.
To hinder the Imperial investigation, Merei decided to alter her profile photo and attempted to delete her account at Bakiska's, her repeater service. To prevent the witness at the Transportation Ministry from identifying her, Merei decided to replace her V-SIS photograph with that of another girl named Hestia Tarleton, a student at the Young Ladies' Seminary of Lothal Settlers. With Jix's assistance, Merei changed her photo but was unable to delete her Bakiska's account. Merei's problems were further complicated by Laxo requesting her services as a courier to pay for the snoopers.
Following a failed attempt by Merei and Jix to delete her Bakiska's account using a pulse-mag, Laxo decided to punish Merei by forcing her to lead a bounty hunter to capture Holshef, a fugitive she had befriended while working for the Gray Syndicate. Before Laxo could carry out his punishment, Merei contacted her mother and framed the Gray Syndicate as the perpetrators behind the Transportation Ministry data breach. She pretended to be a hostage of the Gray Syndicate, claiming they wanted the authorities to cease their investigation into the breach. As a result, Laxo and the entire Syndicate were massacred during a raid by the Imperial authorities. While Merei temporarily evaded the authorities' attention, she was burdened by the guilt of causing the deaths of several innocents.
Despite Merei's efforts to delete the Gray Syndicate's data using her pulse-mag, Merei was unable to escape Imperial justice. Following the arrest of Jix and Hestia, Merei realized that it was only a matter of time before the Imperial authorities identified her as the true culprit behind the Transportation Ministry's data breach. With the help of the Ithorian bartender Old Jho, Merei and her parents along with Leonis' family fled off-world with the assistance of Dev Morgan's rebel cell. After rescuing Zare and Dhara from Arkanis, the Spanjafs and Leonises went into hiding on Garel.
The Transportation Ministry data breach initially appeared as a subplot in Jason Fry's 2015 junior novel Servants of the Empire: Rebel in the Ranks, a related work to the Star Wars Rebels TV series. The data breach was narrated from the perspective of Merei Spanjaf, the second main character in the Servants of the Empire junior novel series.