Angry Employee Deletes All of Company's Data

[Earth_First]

When Marie Lupe Cooley, 41, of Jacksonville, Fla., saw a help-wanted ad in the newspaper for a position that looked suspiciously like her current job — and with her boss's phone number listed — she assumed she was about to be fired.

So, police say, she went to the architectural office where she works late Sunday night and erased 7 years' worth of drawings and blueprints, estimated to be worth $2.5 million.

Police arrested Cooley Monday evening and charged her with causing greater than $1,000 damage to computer files, a felony. She was bailed out the following afternoon.

Hutchins told one TV station he'd managed to recover all the files using an expensive data-recovery service.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,325285,00.html

Sound like anyone we know?

[bahrbearian]

1. What kind of company doesn't back up $2.5 million in files?

[jkshaw]

Ditto

[Cronus Protagonist]

7. One that would use its own phone number on a job ad while the job is still filled?

It just goes to show, you don't have to be smart to be an architect, and not all mistakes can be fixed with ivy.

[AlCzervik]

2. sounds the wh email system dismantler.

[hobbit709]

3. Sounds like someone stopped thinking.

I can think of several way to get the data removed but without tracing it back to me. and if I did something like that, it wouldn't be recoverable.

[tularetom]

9. Remind me never to hire you

:hi:

I like the way you think.

[ladjf]

20. A. You need to use someone else's computer. B. Use data

removing software, timed to execute after hours and then the software remove itself last. (Can still be traced by an expert but not to who created the erase job.)

[Maddy McCall]

4. What a terribly stupid thing for her to do.

Wonder if one of the reasons that she was soon to be replaced was because of her boss's inability to trust her?

[skypilot]

24. Actually...

...it doesn't look as though they were planning to fire her. From the article:

As for the job, Cooley originally wasn't in danger of losing it. The ad was for Hutchins' wife's company.

There's not enough info to figure out why she jumped to that conclusion.

[flvegan]

5. Wouldn't it be ironic

if the company was planning to promote her, and were putting out feelers for her replacement?

[Maddy McCall]

6. Ouch.

[Ian David]

12. I was thinking the same thing! n/t

[ChairmanAgnostic]

8. hm. since when do happy, content, effective employees search want ads?

[LisaM]

17. Actually, more than you would think

I'm always being surprised by coworkers (not me!) who do this on a regular basis.

[LanternWaste]

19. I do quite often.

I do quite often. I like to think of it as keeping my options open.

The better question I think, would be "since when do employees stop looking for ways to advance in their fields?"

[eleny]

10. Olbermann would love to report on this one

[Ian David]

11. If they were able to recover the files, then they weren't really damaged......

... hence she can't be charged with felony damage to files, can she?

Unless the cost of recovery was over $1,000 I guess.

[dragonlady]

26. I think file recovery is quite expensive

but worth it if you really need that data. This very likely cost well above $1,000.

[Virginia Dare]

13. Oopsy!

I bet there is more to this story though.

[JohnyCanuck]

14. That's peanuts to what this guy did.

Revealed: 'Invisible man' rogue trader, 31, behind £3.7 BILLION bank fraud
Last updated at 16:57pm on 24th January 2008

• Reports name banker as Jerome Kerviel, an 'inexperienced' 31-year-old trader who earned less than £75,180

• Bank CEO admitted he does not know where Kerviel is

• British branch now faces redundancies

• FTSE up today as trader is blamed for stock market turmoil - but Société Générale says it was just 'bad luck'

• Trader's losses are four times bigger than Nick Leeson's


A rogue trader known as "the invisible man" gambled up to £60 billion in the world's biggest banking fraud disaster.

The dealer, named in reports as trader Jerome Kerviel and believed to be 31 years old, lost an astonishing £3.7 billion for French bank Société Générale.

The bank says it does not know where the trader is and admitted he still has his passport.

Kerviel, who earned less than £75,000 per year - including bonus - was described as a "technical whizkid" loner who hacked in to the bank's immensely sophisticated trading systems.

A SocGen insider said: "That's like hacking in to the Pentagon. And he did it in a way that meant he removed all trace of what he was doing. All the trades were invisible. SocGen could not see anything of what he was doing.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=510089&in_page_id=1811

[Ian David]

29. Are we sure it's not Neil Bush? n/t

[gollygee]

15. Well if she wasn't going to get fired before

she sure is now.

I wonder what kind of reference she'll get?

[killbotfactory]

16. Why can't anyone who works for a collection or credit card agency ever do this?

[qb]

18. That sounds like fun: format c:

[CreekDog]

21. They weren't smart, but I think they were right about her

I mean, look what she did!

[malaise]

22. Hmmmmmm

Marie must be Kathryn Harris' alias. :D

[enid602]

23. yes

"Sound like anyone we know?" Yes; Dick Cheney.

[Ezlivin]

25. The White House has got a job for her

She could be the anti-archivist that Bush/Cheney need right now.

[Javaman]

27. so who is at fault? the moron the deleted them or the morons that didn't back them up? nt

[mikeytherat]

28. Yes.

mikey_the_rat