Fired IT Worker Replaces CEO's Presentation With Porn

An anonymous reader writes "52-year-old Walter Powell wanted revenge when he was fired from his position as an IT manager at Baltimore Substance Abuse System Inc. So, he hacked into their systems — installing keyloggers to steal passwords. Then, when his CEO was giving a presentation to the board of directors he replaced the slides with pornographic images. Powell has now been given a 2 year suspended sentence, and 100 hours community service."

Comments

Awesome

[headhot]

For no jail time, I think it was almost worth it. Too bad Terry Childs didn't get the same deal.

Re:Awesome

[Penguinisto]

Dude - 100 hours community service?

*Totally* worth it. >:)

(okay, probably not. I'm pretty sure he got promptly black-balled and will likely have to move.)

As for Childs? The diff is that Powell pissed in the corn flakes of a small private company CEO.

Childs' big mistake (well, the biggest one among many) was that he pissed in the corn flakes of bureaucrats whose sense of petty revenge apparently knows no bounds.

Re:Awesome

[Score Whore]

Dude - 100 hours community service?

*Totally* worth it. >:)

(okay, probably not. I'm pretty sure he got promptly black-balled and will likely have to move.)

Move? He'd be lucky if that's all that happens. He's unlikely to ever get a job of any significance again. Would you want this guy working for you?

Re:Awesome

[mwvdlee]

Would you want this guy working for you?

I dunno. He was an IT manager capable of installing software and changing a presentation; that's more IT knowledge than most IT managers have.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Ransom, huh? How much did he ask for? In fact, in what way would Childs have materially benefited from his actions? Answer: in no way could he have benefited, so stop making shit up, asshole.

Re:Awesome

[Hal_Porter]

They should cut his nuts off.

That way all the other computer janitors in the US will shuffle along swiftly and doff their caps humbly to the wealth creating class, motivated by FEAR.

/Oh sorry, wrong forum.

Re:Awesome

[westlake]

For no jail time, I think it was almost worth it. Too bad Terry Childs didn't get the same deal.

Strike 1:

This guy is 52 years old.

Strike 2:

He pled guilty to a felony charge directly related to IT - and one guaranteed to make him all but unemployable even as a greeter at Walmart.

Strike 3.

His probation forbids posession of software "enabing remote access and monitoring of other computers." He can't work out of his home.

Re:Awesome

[cdrudge]

Sounds well suited for a job at Geek Squad.

Re:Awesome

[v1]

it probably won't hurt him very much. We have a BofH that works in my area, hopping from place to place, with surprisingly similar behaviors here, and he just keeps finding new jobs. He'll work somewhere 6-24 months, get fired, (and usually try to exact revenge) and then just finds another sucker in no time.

The problem here is so many companies are looking for computer experts because they aren't computer experts, so it's a market ripe for continuous abuse. There's always another sucker in this business, even in a small area like where I live. Simple background and reference checks would put these sorts out of business, but it's just not common enough because enough of the people doing the hiring don't know what to look for, even though it's dead simple.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

So... you hire people with the intention of screwing them over...?

Re:Awesome

[ehintz]

Preachin' to the choir.

Sad reality is, it's a young folks game. We old timers demand higher salaries, start getting bitchy about 80 hour weeks once we have families, etc. Bright eyed and bushytailed IT grads are cheaper and look more busy (prolly 'cause they haven't yet learned how to run shit efficiently, but PHBs don't comprehend that). Not to say there aren't gigs out there, but at the ripe old age of 42 I'm already pragmatically making contingency plans. Like it or not, there's a bias towards young folks in high tech. Which isn't to say it can't be done, but it's more of a challenge the older ya get. Fortunately that bias seems quite a bit less pronounced down here in NZ, which was one of the many reasons I buggered off here 8 odd years ago. I figure I'm doing better here than I would have if staying in the SFBA.

(also, you mention programming/research-I expect those have higher old age retentions than sysadmin type work, particularly research)

Board of Directors?

[WrongSizeGlass]

He should have substituted his presentation to a community group, city hall or some other public presentation. Showing porn to the board of directors is 2nd only to showing them increasing profits.

Re:Board of Directors?

[Billly Gates]

I wrote a script once that redirected traffic via a proxy to babblefish which translated it to English to Russian and than back to English again. :-)

It made all the emails from hotmail look like they written by a 6 year old. Unfortunately, security software started catching up with man in the middle attacks by the time I was about finished as this was technically a redirect :-( so I could never use it without antivirus software screaming today.

If the guy is old a really embarrasing thing to link is this video. FYI not worksafe or the faint of heart ... aka a shocker. ;-)

Undid his just deserves.

[sgt scrub]

When you walk away from a job there is nothing more satisfying than letting it fall to shit after you go. Doing something on the way out or after you leave just proves you didn't have any positive effect on the business.

Re:Undid his just deserves.

[geekoid]

Thats' not good revenge.
Good revenge is when they call you and you say 'I'll help 200 an hour, 20 hour min.'
Showing up to work making 3 times more is the best revenge.

Re:Undid his just deserves.

[Caerdwyn]

When you walk away from a job there is nothing more satisfying than letting it fall to shit after you go. Doing something on the way out or after you leave just proves you didn't have any positive effect on the business.

Ah, but the difference between "let" and "cause" is the difference between schaenfreude and "boy, you got a purty mouth". Depending upon the mood of the judge, that difference is literal.

He did get lucky.

Re:Undid his just deserves.

[Hal_Porter]

Loads of places that got rid of me folded soon after.

One burned to the ground, but I have a cast iron alibi for that night.

Re:Undid his just deserves.

[billcopc]

Oh, nice. Management finally read the "Complete Idiots guide to posting as AC".

I've watched too many companies struggle after losing a star employee. Not just someone who's good at their job, but also good at a bunch of tangentially-related duties too. The coder with a background in corporate accounting, or the sysadmin with people skills, these hybrids are often the backbone of a small business, but the pigeonholing nature of management often fails to recognize that extra value. You can replace them with a regular, boring, single-minded IT guy, sure, but the new guy won't do all that extra stuff that was taken for granted.

Given that a significant part of any IT skillset is problem-solving, usually the guy with the most diverse knowledge base is also the most creative and resourceful one. He might not be so great at coding, and he probably relies on Google a lot for server admin, but he'll be the one to save your hide when disaster strikes, because he understands how all the pieces fit together and can attack a problem from all angles at once.

That's the kind of IT guy you'll miss when he's gone, and once the new husks run out of ideas 7 minutes into the crisis, that's the guy you'll be calling for help, and it won't be cheap.

Re:Undid his just deserves.

[grapeape]

That happens more often than you think, Its actually happened to me twice..once with a telco I worked for where my department was eliminated as a cost saving measure, my department had 16 people when I started, was down to 2 engineers by the time I was let go. Within two weeks they were calling both of us to try and get us to come back, we both refused to come back in a salary position but offered to come back as contractors...shit was bad so they paid up, I spent a total of one month in two cities and made more in that time than I made in 6 months while I was working there.

The second time was two years ago with my own business, a client decided I was too expensive and decided to "go a different direction", the guy they hired was a relative of one of the company's partners and over a holiday break they managed to have their main server go down after a storm. Their new IT guy kept trying to fix the old machine with random parts, turns out he was hiding the fact that he hadn't had a good backup in over a month. I got a call saying they needed my help, I explained that they had ditched me, and that it was a holiday break (my biggest client closes for a week during the holiday season), they said it didn't matter what it cost they just needed their data. I told them I would do it on an hourly basis on the condition that the idiot who was now in charge just stayed out of the way. I billed them at 2.5x my standard rate, I kept backup hardware of all my clients gear on hand and still had the board and raid card that matched their system at home. Got the new machine up and didn't even have to restore anything, fixed the backup problem made a good backup and presented them a nice bill. They offered to "bring me onboard" again, I told them I didn't have time but wished them luck with my replacement.

Re:Undid his just deserves.

[St.Creed]

It's long been known that there are huge differences in productivity and output between IT-people. Some can do 8x the work of others. Some are respected in their field, other skilled IT-people want to work with them, but not with the nephew of the manager. There's all kinds of differences in personality and training.

It's not just true in IT. I've seen a case where one person was doing all the accounting in a firm. He had spare time in the afternoon to compose music. Everything ran like clockwork. Then his replacement arrived (he retired). They had to cut down his workload to half the original job and he still can't keep up.

Everyone is replaceable. It just isn't always very smart to replace good people with unknown quantities.

Re:Undid his just deserves.

[RivenAleem]

I lost my stapler in that fire.

Way to stick it to the man.

[wcrowe]

I'm glad he's not actually in jail, otherwise I would have to start a FREE WALTER POWELL movement.

Re:Crap like this is what gives IT a bad name

[Frosty Piss]

And that's the best he could do? Girly pictures during a presentation. What a loser. Probably still lives in his parent's basement.

The story says "porn", but not what kind of porn...

So...

[Nethemas the Great]

How did the presentation go?

Reminds me...

[bughunter]

This story reminds me of a friend who, 20 years ago, was the IT person for a small aerospace startup that ran a Macintosh network with a single dial-in. (He may even be reading this: hats off, Mr Jones!)

They fired him, unamicably, and failed to change the passwords on the dialup (among other mistakes not later abused). So he decided to get his revenge by dialing in and sending multiple copies of a word document to every printer in the company (501 copies, iirc, guaranteed to empty every paper tray). The document was a quote from the Blonde Bimbo Office Manager ("BBOM"), in 36-point Helvetica:

"I've been at the bottom, and I've been at the top. I don't care how much dick I have to suck, I'm not going to be at the bottom again." Signed, [BBOM]

I was still there when it happened. The best part was, the BBOM took a stack of these printouts to every person in the building, shrieking: "Did you do this? Did YOU do this??" Nobody know who did it, in fact I think few even suspected the dialup.*

Now those are some lulz.

[*I didn't know it was him until months later, after the company laid off 90% of its staff, including me. Its doors shut a year later.]

It's human nature

[Weaselmancer]

It's not an IT thing. Everyone does this.

I was the IT guy for a company that did company restructuring, or failing that, liquidation. If you've ever been to Ohio and you're the right age you'll remember Carpet Barn and Tile House. I was the guy who liquidated their technical assets. That's a fancy way of saying the boss gave me a truck and a map and said "if it's worth more than 2 cents and plugs into something, put it on the truck." So I got to see every single Carpet Barn.

Now to be fair, they closed very suddenly. It was a Thursday. Workers showed up to locked doors. Salesmen had taken down payments from customers the previous day. The money was lost and never refunded, people didn't get their carpet. It was a bad scene.

You should have seen these places.

Workers opened up the doors with bolt cutters and trashed every single outlet. Holes kicked in the walls, refrigerators turned over, coffee pots smashed into copiers. Office furniture beaten into splinters. Carpet rolls thrown everywhere. Every store looked like the scene of a riot.

Re:It's human nature

[Caerdwyn]

It's not an IT thing. Everyone does this.

Well, no, not everybody.

I've been wrongfully fired before, being made the bearer-of-blame for a manager who made the wrong decisions and hoped that the blame would walk out the door with me. I was (and actually still am, gotta love knowledge of trade secrets and dirty secrets and of contacts made with said company's partners) in a position to hurt the company badly in retaliation. But I didn't do so. Why, oh why, in this era of tech workers who exhibit such open contempt of non-techies and thinking the sun shines out their asses?

1. I'm a better person than the manager in question. I have ethics, and stooping to low revenge is a breach in ethics.
2. Karma works. The company in question has run into troubles due to said bad decisions.
3. Karma works, redux. There are plenty of people who know point 1, and will stand by me in references and "unofficial" contacts. If I compromised myself, they wouldn't and shouldn't.
4. In this valley, everybody knows everybody (or knows someone who does... helllllllo, LinkedIn). Bad firings are known for what they are, regardless of court. So are acts of revenge, regardless of court. I landed on my feet, am in a much better situation than I would be today if I were at the old company, and will continue to do well.

None of the above makes me in any way unique. Most people are big enough to behave that way, or to semi-quote Chris Rock, "You say you take care of your kids? Of COURSE you're supposed to take care of your kids, dumbass!" It's the expected default behavior. It's the ones who don't who make the news... and Slashdot.

Now, perhaps you meant "it happens in every industry", but this IS Slashdot. Tech is (ostensibly) what it's about here.

To be fair, we don't know WHY the person was fired (though we do know his personality allows for revenge). I'm not going to automatically side with him just because he's a fellow tech "worker bee". I know plenty of "worker bee" IT folks who I wouldn't hire to water my lawn, much less care for my datacenter. I also know a couple of CEOs I'd trust with my bank account numbers. Assumption of righteousness and evil based upon job title... that's just wrong.

All that being said, I'd probably buy the gentleman in question a beer, but I'd never hire him or put him in a position of trust. The ability of people to justify breaches of trust is well-night infinite, and someone who will engage in acts of revenge can be counted upon to do it again, whether they deserved to be fired or not. This is a Pyrhhic victory at best, and while amusing to us, is career-suicide for him.

Hope it was worth it. Hope his family (if any) thinks so too.

Don't they understand?

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone pulls a stunt like this, all they're doing is making it hard for everyone.

Re:Don't they understand?

[Ihmhi]

Just because his job went tits up doesn't mean he had to be a dick about it.

Did he deserve to get sacked

[Bruce66423]

Of course there is an argument that if he was sufficiently ignorant to get himself caught, then he deserved to get sacked in the first place....

Re:fail

[mr1911]

Next time slightly alter the presentation to make it look incompetent

For most PowerPoint presentations, that is accomplished without making any edit to the original.

Re:Sounds like a good decision

[epyT-R]

what if he was fired wrongfully? today's situation prevents any sort of justice from happening. if he was canned for politics then I have no sympathy for his employer whatsoever.

Unprofessional

[BlueCoder]

This guy would have been smarter if he had found another disgruntled employee and waited a while and then framed him. Or could it be that that is what happened, he could have been marked as an obvious target and someone smarter set him up! Whomever did the hacking it was still childish, the equivalent of keying someones car.

I don't own an IT company but I wouldn't want to work with this guy. Very childish. I can't wait until we finally see these clowns plant child porn or evidence of credit card fraud and other serious crime so they can prove what I have said for years about that subject and computer vulnerability. The first being that no content should be illegal no matter how vulgar it is aka 1st amendment (instead use it to track down people and make sure they aren't committing crimes and making content). Second computer systems are insecure and any lay person should discount any digital evidence taken from a persons personal devices (it's just too easy to frame people). Hacking in inherently unprovable unless you actively bug a persons house and computer and can show he manned the keyboard and can be video recorded tying the things they accused him of doing. I say this because even I would be smart enough to rig a persons computer to do things in the background while he was physically at the computer.

As far as law enforcement I am surprised that more people aren't up in arms over the fact that with a simple accusation the police can come in and permanently seize thousands of dollars of computer equipment and all your personal information and just maybe you'll get it back five years later when it's obsolete and only if you managed to actually prove your innocence (not found not guilty). Further they take can take all your backups so you have nothing to restore from. Then they will probably try to strong arm you with the lure of getting your property back. And this is all legal.

Re:Unprofessional

[Wolfling1]

Well, I do own an IT company, and I'm not hiring him.

It is very normal for humans to have thoughts about revenge after a kick in the guts. Indeed, if we didn't think about revenge, there would be something wrong with us.

However, converting those thoughts into actions is an indicator of poor impulse control, and extremely poor judgement.

/. is a funny place as we can all think-out-loud about these things. Some people even make the mistake of believing that a few of the folks here would do these kinds of things.

I prefer to think that the crazies don't inhabit this realm. That's why I keep coming back.

Re:idiocracy

[westlake]

why are six of the last 7 stories tagged with 'idiocracy'?

I blame it on Bitcoin. It rots the geek mind.

Fuck the CEO culture of today

[aeoo]

At least he didn't stab the CEO like they do in India. If the CEO culture doesn't improve, it will come to that eventually in USA. Mark my words.

Re:Fuck the CEO culture of today

[Greyfox]

Tell me more about this?

Re:OH NO, IT'S A COMPUTER!!!

[bigstrat2003]

TFA makes it clear what happened: he didn't replace a presentation with porn on the way out, he actually used his old logins after the fact to control the computer during a presentation and bring up porn. So not exactly hacking, but also pretty clearly illegal.

We were ...

[PPH]

... 15 minutes into watching someone take it in the @ss before we realized it wasn't a demonstration of HR's new policy.