Silicon Valley Spying
I told this story to Nancy Keene last week and she suggested that I post in on my blog. Nancy has a new blog The Perfect Fit she is in the executive search business and therefore the very appropriate name for the blog.
Our discussion started out with post we had both read in regard to DAs not willing to file charges against corporate thieves, embezzlers etc.
While I was the President of SCI ZeitNet Inc. we had a case of an employee (lets call him Lu) a great employee in many ways always interested in learning more about our products. In fact that is what tipped me of to him, anyone already working 12 hours a day did not have the time or inclination to branch out that much. After much work by detectives and outside IT help, we discovered that Lu was in fact a Spy and was sending all our documentation, my business plans, and all our technical files to his bosses in China. We were designing high-end ATM networking switches and our largest customer was the US Government. I when to the DA in San Jose and he had no interest at all said it was a civil matter. I later found out from the FBI that Lu had done the same thing at Apple, Bay Networks, and Cisco, all of which gave me Lu good marks on reference checks. Clearly we fired him immediately (he still got CA unemployment). Our attorney warned me that I could not say anything bad about Lu when the next company called to check him out. That did not sit well with me, so I had them file a civil suit, knowing we could not collect any damages. We did get Lu to admit the theft as part of the settlement filed with the court. Now there is a public record that I was free to refer anyone to when they did a reference check on Lu. Best $5k I ever spent.
