Ooops! Disgrunted Worker Accused of Deleting $2.5 Million Worth of Files–Because of a Help Wanted Ad
JACKSONVILLE, FL — The target may be high-tech, but the emotion involved is as old as humanity. Spite, anger, and revenge. Police say that’s what filled a woman’s heart after she picked up the classified ads.When Marie Cooley came across a job that looked like hers in the classifieds, she admits she was certain she was about to be fired. So police say late Sunday night, she crept into the Mandarin office where she worked at Steven E. Hutchins Architects.
“She decided to go and mess up everything for everybody,” said Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office spokesman Ken Jefferson.
Jefferson says Cooley accessed the company’s server with her own account. And with a handful of mouse clicks and keystrokes, he says she deleted seven years’ worth of architectural drawings.
Seven years of work — gone in seconds.
The company put the value of the vaporized files at $2.5 million.
“She decided to be spiteful and go in and sabotage the records. And she did a very good job of that,” Jefferson said.
According to police, Cooley confessed to the crime. It’s a second degree felony that could lay the blueprints for a five-year prison sentence.
Folks at the architecture firm didn’t want to talk on camera about the disastrous deletion.
The owner did tell First Coast News that he’s paid good money to recover those files and he says he’s now managed to get every deleted drawing back from its digital death.
“The lesson to be learned here is that you can’t depend on having just one set of records or files and having your employees have access to them. You’ve got to have some kind of backup,” Jefferson said.
And here’s the most sobering part: the owner of the architecture firm says Marie Cooley was not going to be fired. He says the job listing was for his wife’s business — not his.
There may be a moral there somewhere about the danger of leaping to conclusions without supporting evidence. Meanwhile, the lady has gone from valued employee to unemployed woman likely to spend several years in prison.Business owners, too, may want to think about how trustworthy their trusted employees really are.
Robert D said,
January 23, 2008 @ 11:17 pm
Yup, leaping to conclusions can be hazardous to the rest of your life. How stupid of this woman to Burn a Bridge before she even crossed it, and probably land in prison to boot.
It took me a while to learn that little lesson in life, but it has served me very well once I settled down and got serious about life.
Robert D said,
January 24, 2008 @ 12:23 am
Uh, the burning a bridge thing. I burned one or two, but at least it was after I crossed them.
SwampWoman said,
January 24, 2008 @ 12:05 pm
Yeah, I’ve not only burned them, but blew up the remains afterward.
Burnt said,
January 25, 2008 @ 3:30 pm
Doesnt ass-u-me also stand for something else?
swampie said,
January 25, 2008 @ 4:43 pm
Yep, and she certainly made one of herself.
patrick said,
January 26, 2008 @ 1:34 am
I have deleted some OS files from my PC when I was fired from my last job, but it was not worth millions of dollars. You just could not boot the computer! lol this can easily be fixed with s good formatting of the hard drive!
I guess the moral of the story is that, whatever you do, short of arson, is all recoverable given today’s technology. I think the real lesson is to know who your employees really are, and what they are capable of.
Obviously nobody knew what type of person she really was, given that she was capable of such an action that nobody saw coming.
Also if you have millions of dollars in digital info you would need some sort of backup. What do you think?
swampie said,
January 26, 2008 @ 10:49 am
I believe the majority of the data was successfully recovered.