Top10 Times Employees Lost Their Minds
#10: The Soft Drink Sting
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Coke vs. Pepsi — it’s the ultimate soft drink competition. While the “Cola Wars” persisted from the late 70s into the 80s, this retail rivalry is much friendlier now. However, Joya Williams, an assistant of Coke’s global brand director, tried shaking things up again in 2006. Williams got her hands on a new product and tried selling it to Pepsi for $1.5 million. Under the pseudonym “Dirk,” Williams and her accomplices, Ibrahim Dimson and Edmund Duhaney, sent Pepsi a letter demanding $10,000 upfront. Instead of declaring a Cola War for a new generation, Pepsi alerted the authorities. Pepsi and Coke cooperated in a sting operation led by the FBI. The three conspirators were ultimately arrested, with Williams receiving an eight-year prison sentence.
#9: Thrown Under the Self-Driving Car
Anthony Levandowski was a key engineer behind Google’s self-driving car division, Waymo. In 2016 Levandowski left Google to co-found Otto, which he subsequently sold to Uber. However, his time at Uber didn’t last long, as he was fired in May 2017. In 2019, Levandowski was charged with stealing trade secrets from Waymo’s precursor, Project Chauffeur. Levandowski allegedly downloaded thousands of files, most notably “critical engineering information about the hardware used on Project Chauffeur self-driving vehicles.” Levandowski pled guilty to downloading a document that contained information about Google’s self-driving cars. Levandowski confessed, “I downloaded this file with the intent to use it for the benefit of someone other than Google.” Meanwhile, Uber granted Waymo $245 million in stock.
#8: Grand Theft Tram
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Don’t you just hate it when you pop out for a bathroom break and when you return, your tram is missing? Okay, maybe that’s not the most relatable problem, but one Wiener Linien driver knows what we’re talking about. This bizarre theft took place while a tram was stopped at Vienna’s Rodaun station. Although the door was locked, someone managed to break in and take the trolley for a wild ride. After only about two stops, the transit officials shut the electricity off and brought the tram to a halt. The culprit was none other than 36-year-old Irina Steirer, a former Wiener Linien driver who had been pushed out of the company several years earlier. Steirer probably should’ve selected a better getaway vehicle.
#7: Buy It. Sell It. Steal It.
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Virtually everything on the internet is traceable and Graham Rust really should’ve kept this in mind. Working at a healthcare company for 24 years, Rust felt underappreciated and mistreated by his bosses. Being just another cog in the machine, Rust apparently figured nobody would suspect him of stealing medical supplies valued at £20,000, about $25,000 US. Rust went into business for himself and started selling the stolen items. Setting up shop on eBay was a huge miscalculation, though. It wasn’t long until the company found their goods online and traced the account back to Rust. This resulted in an eight-month prison sentence and 200 hours of community service.
#6: $12 a Night
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$12 for a room at a Marriott hotel? A deal like that sounds too good to be true! That’s because it is. In August 2016, Juan Rodriguez was let go from Marriott with a strict order not to go near their computer network. That didn’t stop Rodriguez from hacking into the company’s reservation system and slashing the rates for more than 3,000 rooms. Rooms priced at $159-$499 were suddenly reduced to $12-$59. Rodriguez might’ve gotten away with it if only he’d done a better job at hiding his IP address. Rodriguez claimed that his employees had planned to fabricate a story about him renting rooms on the side, to stop him collecting unemployment. In the end, Rodriguez cost Marriott $50,000.
#5: Million Dollar Misunderstanding
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This story is like something out of a workplace sitcom that took a dark turn. Reading the wanted ads one day, Marie Lupe Cooley noticed that her boss, Steven Hutchins, was looking to fill an administrative assistant position. The job description was similar to her own, leading Cooley to believe that she was about to be sacked. Rather than ask her employers about the ad, Cooley went to the office on a Sunday night and deleted seven years’ worth of documents valued at $2.5 million. Cooley was quickly caught and charged $1,000 for damages, not to mention fired. Steven Hutchins said the deleted files could be retrieved using expensive software. The irony is that the ad was for Hutchins’ wife’s firm.
#4: Insecurity
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It’s definitely not a good sign when a security firm can’t even keep itself secure. Esselar wasn’t anticipating an inside job, however. A director and co-founder at Esselar, Richard Neale quit and sold his shares in 2013 over an insurance payment. Bitter over the ordeal, Neale decided to get back at his former colleagues. At the time, Esselar was providing security for the insurance company Aviva. Over the course of five months, Neale hacked into 900 of Aviva’s phones and wiped their data clean. Aviva proceeded to terminate its deal with Esselar, costing the security over £500,000 in lost business deals. Neale would pay a significant price as well, getting sentenced to 18 months in prison.
#3: Bringing Down the Bank
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It only takes one person to break a bank. After a performance review went south in 2013, Lennon Ray Brown shut down 90% of Citibank’s networks across North America. Brown was sentenced to 21 years and forced to pay $77,000. But this was nickels and dimes compared to the collapse of Barings Bank in 1995, which was forced to close its doors after more than 200 years of operation. It was all thanks to one Nick Leeson - the bank’s general trading manager in Singapore. Without proper supervision, Leeson was able to make unauthorized trades. It was all documented in a secret file, titled “Error Account 88888,” which revealed that he’d cost Barings £827 million. This amounted to the bank’s downfall and 6½ years behind bars for Leeson.
#2: A Dastardly Delivery
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People are usually excited when an eBay order arrives in the mail. For one Natick couple, though, each delivery brought new nightmares. In 2019, six eBay executives and employees allegedly sent the couple grotesque items, such as live roaches and spiders, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig mask. The employees even sent adult magazines to their neighbor’s house with the husband’s name on the subscription. They also reportedly conspired to break into their car and install a GPS. And what was the motivation behind this? The couple published an online e-commerce newsletter, and eBay’s executive leadership team didn’t like what they had to say. Unsurprisingly, the six individuals behind this plot are no longer employed by eBay.
#1: The Australian Chainsaw Demolition
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Some angry workers devise intricate revenge plots, while others take a more direct approach. When Wayne Crook was let go from Bristol Flying Centre in 2013, he grabbed a hammer and caused £175,000 in damages at his old office. Construction workers in Australia went one step further in 2016 after their boss allegedly didn’t pay them. The crew took their frustration out on a house that they’d been building. Using chainsaws, the workers undid their hard work by ripping through the framework. The footage was posted to Facebook with the captions, “Builders who don’t wanna pay invoices” and “Will learn the hard way”. We guess that they got their point across, but we’re not sure about their employment prospects going forward.
