Afraid of Losing Job, Florida Woman Deletes Office Files Worth $2.5 Million
People can get awfully paranoid when it comes to their jobs. Some people can't help but think that everyone is out to get them, which seems to be the case for Marie Cooley of Jacksonville, Florida. Cooley is currently in jail after confessing to deleting files worth an estimated $2.5 million at her former employer, all because she thought she was about to get fired. As it turns out, she wasn't getting the boot, but we're not entirely sure she's the one with the most questionable judgment in this story.
It turns out that Cooley saw an ad in the classifieds for a job that sounded a lot like hers posted by her current employer, Steven E. Hutchins Architects, also in Jacksonville. She got angry, went in to work, and deleted all the company's work from its servers. She cleaned out seven years' worth of designs and drawings, designs the owner of the company estimated were worth $2.5 million. Cooley confessed to what is a second degree felony, potentially punishable by a five-year sentence.
She obviously wasn't quite right in the head when doing this, but we're inclined to think that the owner of the business isn't all there either. Despite estimating the worth of the company's files at $2.5 million, the architecture firm had no backup systems in place. That's a recipe for disaster regardless of the sanity of your employees. Even the local Sheriff's office knows better than that, issuing the following statement:
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.Thankfully the files were able to be recovered, but backups of important files are not something you should take lightly. These days, backups are easy to implement, regardless of what kind of computing you do. On the Mac, OSX 10.5 Leopard includes the Time Machine functionality which, when stored on an external USB drive, makes backing up easy. On Windows you can copy your important stuff to an external drive yourself or invest in a Windows Home Server box to automatically and securely back up your stuff daily.
Oh, and that job posting that sent Cooley off? Turns out it was for another company run by the boss's wife. Go figure.
From First Coast News
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
D Lebron said 2:30PM on 1-24-2008
she she go to jail for 10yrs just for the stupid thought. now she can think more clearly what she has done, i hope there will a way that the company can retrieve there data from a bin where they go before permantly being deleted.
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jim said 10:07PM on 1-25-2008
My whole business is backed up twice, yet I'm so small I don't even call myself "Mom and Pop"
I'm just "Pop".
I'd have to double in size to become Mom and Pop.
When I finally get around to building my needed ofice park, I know one architect to avoid.
jf
www.ImaginaryMotors.com
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Carol Drewry said 6:47AM on 1-25-2008
Uh, that's the way to do it... delete all the files....DUH! How about .....eh.....HONESTY??!!
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Patricia said 6:58AM on 1-25-2008
She should have printed the ad, marched into her bosses office and ask for an explanation. OOPS!
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Cheyenne said 7:43AM on 1-25-2008
Her reaction falls under "someone with an untreated mental illness."
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cathy said 8:45AM on 1-25-2008
What a dork. Any architect who doesn't have a back up plan doesn't deserve to be in business. If he didn't do something as basic and simple as backing up his computer, what do you think will happen when his projects hit a snag? Bury his head in his pillow, I guess. What a moron.
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Larry said 8:28AM on 1-25-2008
Deleting files only deletes the addresses from the drive's File Access Table. To really delete a file you have to overwrite it, even then it can be recovered by special software which is top secret material on drives is overwritten at least fives times to blank out the info.
The article best decribes her act as paranoid.
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Ted said 8:35AM on 1-25-2008
As a person who has worked in the computer service industry for over 20 years I can tell you lots of stories about companies whose entire
business is dependent on a computer yet they don't have current backups of their data or a even a plan for if the computer quits working.
For some reason they think us service guys can save them from their own stupidity every time.
Stuff breaks, plan on it! Even if you have agood backup of all you data, if the machine suffers
a meltdown, the time it takes to replace the hardware, reload the software, and get everything
running again can have a severe impact on your business. (like nothing gets done for a day or two because its all on the computer).
Poor system management is also another leading
factor, there is a good reason for limiting file
access and user privileges, but most people don't want to be bothered with setting them up.
Care to bet on how many people reading this who don't have a current backup?
have
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JON said 8:52AM on 1-25-2008
Why was she looking in the help wanted section any way does that show she was looking for a new job?
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ALD said 8:53AM on 1-25-2008
I do agree with some type of punishment, like community service 6 months in jail, but 10 years that's nuts! First, of course it cost the tax payers another abuse on us! Second that's more time than some perverts, rapist and murderers get. Justics is far from 'fair', it's time to stop the crazy inequities of the system!
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CA said 8:56AM on 1-25-2008
Sounds more like a "communication" breakdown to me. While I don't agree with the immature way the employee handled the situation it also sounds like there may have been other things going on and her having a lack of confidence in her work to "think" she was being fired. Why was she looking in the "want" ads anyway? Sounds like she may have not been the devoted employee anyway....
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Debbie said 9:09AM on 1-25-2008
The worker definitely needs to get help. The company not having backup is even more mental and downright medieval times. Regarding the job post, she definitely should've made a comment to the company. Sometimes a company wants to fire an employee but before doing so wants to have a substitute readily the next day. And their excuse for it was for another company owned by his wife, can be just that... an excuse to complete the innocent part.
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Dayna said 9:14AM on 1-25-2008
I say good for Her. She should of asked Her Employer first, if She thought She was getting the boot, THEN deleted the files. I say this only because I worked for a company, and My Boss was THE most caniving,back stabbing, self important Person I've ever met. She would cut corners and genuinely screw People over...in Health Care~ That is a bad thing. So I have thought about it. Sadly, the pocket is the ONLY place to hit Someone where it hurts. People don't care about the "right thing" anymore...the "right thing" doesn't pay the power bill. Good for Her I say!
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Mike Sanders said 9:26AM on 1-25-2008
If deleting the files is a second degree felony, punishable by a five-year sentence, can you imagine what the sys admin might be charged with?
Anyone can have a day day, but 7 years of NO BACKUPS! It sounds like this company wanted a catastophy... If I were the insurer, I'd feel no obligation to cover the losses.
Profoundly, incompetant.
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Virginia said 9:30AM on 1-25-2008
SHE IS FULL OF HATE AND ANGER , I CAN SEE IT RIGHT IT HER FACE,..SHE IS WHERE SHE BELONGS FOR DOING SOMETHING SO MEAN,..SHE REALLY WANTED TO HURT THIS MAN AND SHE DID, BUT LOOK WHERE SHE IS NOW,...IT'S CALLED "KARMA"
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flo said 9:45AM on 1-25-2008
IN REPLY TO THE PERSON THAT USED TO LIVE IN JACKSONVILLE FLORIDA, I LIVE HERE AND I AM NOT A DUMB HILLBILLY, IN FACT I AM EXTREMLY SMART.
I GREW UP HERE AND HAVE ESTABLISHED MY OWN BUSINESS, I DO UNDERSTAND HOW THE COMPANY COULD HAVE NOT HAD A BACKUP,I HAD MY BACKUP AND I STILL COULD NOT GET THE INFO TO COME UP EVEN WITH THE HELP OF A PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER COMPANY.
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Marian Coffman said 9:45AM on 1-25-2008
I was sent on a temp job as a legal assistant. The third day there a young lady of about 25 accused me of sending her porn from my computer. I'm a 65 year old lady with 10 grandkids! The following day my computer crashed and a IS worker took out the hard drive. Go figure this one out.
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kasht said 9:50AM on 1-25-2008
what she should have done is inform her employer the importance of having a backup of the files,besides it would have looked good on her next resume...unfortunately sometimes we act in haste.......
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Jini said 9:52AM on 1-25-2008
I guess she'll get fired now....!!! What goes around ,Comes around.... Hope she get to think about it, in jail, for a long time....
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Chris said 9:53AM on 1-25-2008
uh, DUH.........
I run a small business. There's a little goody hiding in Windows XP called backup. I close at 6 every day, at 6:15 backup automatically starts and runs unattended until it's done.
When the old computer croaked it took a couple of hours to restore the data and we didn't loose a single thing during the transfer and change to the new computer.
Anybody who doesn't do something along those lines is just an accident waiting to happen.
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