Posted on 06/24/2011 1:01:29 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Imagine you're giving a presentation to the board of directors at your company. You have your PowerPoint slides all ready, you're projecting onto a 64 inch screen... what could possibly go wrong?
Well, what would you do if your carefully composed presentation was replaced on the big screen by images of a naked woman? My guess is that you wouldn't know where to put your laser pointer..
52-year-old Walter Powell used to be an IT manager at Baltimore Substance Abuse System Inc, until he was fired in 2009. Clearly someone who believed that revenge should be served red hot, Powell used his computer knowledge to hack into his former employer's systems from his home and install keylogging software to steal passwords.
On one occasion, Powell took remote control of his former CEO's PowerPoint presentation to the board of directors, and projected pornographic images on the 64 inch TV.
Press release about Walter Powell's sentencing
According to media reports, Judge M. Brooke Murdock gave Powell a two year suspended sentence, and ordered him to 100 hours of community service and three years' probation.
Cases like this underline the importance of having a proper process in place when staff leave your company. That means changing passwords, and removing access rights when an employee's time at your firm comes to an end.
People do, of course, leave jobs all the time and most of them would never dream of logging back in to their old place of work to cause trouble. But it only takes one disaffected former worker to wreak havoc - so make sure your defences are in place, and that only authorised users can access your sensitive systems.
FWIW, all the evil bosses I worked for got what was coming to them , it was a karma thing, so ya got to learn to let go of it. But if you want to make change you really have to get the synapsis firing to figure out how to do it...For instance, I boss I had was maniacal tyrant was bested by a employee that left after I did. This employee had the intestinal fortirude to go to the Corp Ombudsman ( as he said not HR they are usless ) or was it a VP of his boss for a private exit interview... The response was thank you, we knew it was bad over their, but we had no idea.
3 weeks later said maniacal tyrant took a mysterious early retirement @ 52 yrs of age....
Funny how that worked.
“he grabbed 1-2 months of money from all employees (over 500 people) and filed bankruptcy.”
I guess he figured none of them owned firearms.
Well there’s “that side of it” ... the guy that did it was unprofessional, etc. But I lay the blame on the CEO’s desk. I’ve actually made PowerPoint presentations for two CEO’s in 2 different companies. Not one of them didn’t CHECK through the presentation just before it was given. Not to only for things like this, but to give it one “last-minute” check to make sure they’ve got the wording correct, and confirming they will give a perfect presentation. REAL CEOs do that. If a guy isn’t going to check his speech minutes before the presentation, then I wouldn’t want him running my company! My guess this CEO doesn’t know where the on/off switch is on his computer. If you can’t handle “displaying” a PowerPoint presentation from your laptop, you shouldn’t be running a company.
Although I can see the rationale of not saying something terrible about somebody, for it could seem slanderous. I fail to see how you can be sued for saying something positive.
Ah well.
More likely HR would say “You’d be lucky to get him to work for you.”
Read the story again - this was the sentencing after the court case, he was fired and did the crime immediately afterwards in 2009.
Like others here, I'd like more info because it does seem that there was something else going on for only a 2 year suspended sentence. Additionally if he was CIO, he probably was able to prove that he COULD have done much more severe damage as a mitigating view. Just embarrASSing the CEO and the board is more of a directed reproach. Personally, I'll bet that the CEO is also looking for the exit, relationship with the board and company don't recover easily from such incidents.
Very true. OTOH, the net articles wont help any!
A company here caught their CFO stealing. The private investigator found he had 7 prior felony convictions.
They didn’t fire him or press charges because they didn’t want it made public.
Another company CEO had prostitutes and cocaine on the corporate jet. The same PI friend has video of the event.
Its unbelievable how unethical some of those guys are.
——I wonder if there is more to this tale?——
Like nonprofit competition for grants?
Let me guess - the perp is a chronic bachelor with few friends, and lousy luck with the ladies. If he had a family, he wouldn’t be as likely to do this, I suppose.
Question is, did you hack into these bad CEOs’ computers and replace vital documents with salacious material?
no.
but... i also did not give them a license for a set of tools used as the basis of the systems developed. the tools were the intellectual property of my company and required to build the system. they were fully aware the tools were being used, as it saved months of development effort and allowed us to meet the deadlines quicker.
and all would have been fine... if they hadn’t tried to screw me.
don’t screw the geeks. especially if you’re non-technical and want a technical product
A revenge expert, yessir.
If I wanted to help a guy out I’d say, “If you don’t hire him, ask him to give us a call, would you??”
I think the vast majority of people believe that they are undervalued. Even if you say something positive about such persons, they will believe that you have understated the matter and will resent it.
One person who had worked for me until he was fired for incompetence and laziness, had the audacity to use me as a reference some years later, perhaps not thinking that the reference would be checked.
When informed that I had been used as a reference, my response was, "Really?". The voice on the other end of the line said, "That's all I need to know. Thanks."
I once hired a guy, who caught me taking a 2 hour nap, because I had just finished working 96 hours (24 hour convenience store and I can’t keep employees). He came into my office, saw me napping and walked out on the job.
He had the audacity to reapply for the position 4 years later, thinking I wouldn’t remember him.
I happen to remember nearly everybody.
I once hired a guy, who caught me taking a 2 hour nap, because I had just finished working 96 hours (24 hour convenience store and I can’t keep employees). He came into my office, saw me napping and walked out on the job.
He had the audacity to reapply for the position 4 years later, thinking I wouldn’t remember him.
I happen to remember nearly everybody.
“I wrote his name down but I put his neighbor’s address.”
Nice twist!
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