Part 2 - The Case of the Purloined Disk Drives
Back in the early 90's, a couple of pals and I started a company to provide data storage for the exploding Sun Microsystems workstation market. Our business plan (yeah like we had one of those) was to quickly scoop up the latest and greatest technology, slap it into a desktop shoebox, and beat our competitors to the punch. The data storage industry was undergoing its own space race, with vendors rolling out a steady supply of bigger, faster disk drives. The flavor of this day was Maxtor's 525MB drive. Maxtor had beat everyone else to the magic 500MB level, and these drives were hot commodities. More hot, in fact, than I realized.
Part of my job at this company was procurement officer. Translation: I would buy the weekly edition of Computer Shopper at the local newstand and scour the ads looking for folks offering the latest drives. Spotted an ad for the treasured Maxtor drive and placed a quick call. "Sure we have those drives. How many do you want?" Placed an order for about 100 of them and as I hung up I thought to myself that it was odd that this seller offered the drives so cheap. Attributing this to my shrewd negotiating skills, I went about my business. I few days later, on a Friday as I recall, the drives showed up as promised and I began assembling them without too much further thought.
The following Monday morning was bright and sunny, a beautiful day in the Boston metro area. I saw another car in the lot as I pulled in to work but didn't think too much of it. I did notice, however that two men in suits followed me to the front door. As I reached for my keys, one of them identified himself as an FBI agent and the other as a representative of Maxtor. Had I recently purchased some 525MB disk drives from Mr X? I gulped and said yes I had. They said they wanted to talk to me and the story unfolded.
Turns out Mr X was part of a theft ring. Employees of Sun had been pocketing these nifty drives and emptying their pockets in his shop. Sun had noticed some accounting irregularities and began tracking serial numbers. The FBI wanted to take my drives and see if the serial numbers matched. Was I willing to cooperate? Just then my partners arrived, and they looked at me like I was going to single-handedly bring the company down. Wouldn't you know it, the phone rang at that moment and it was Mr X - asking if I got the drives OK. "Tell him you want to buy more drives" the FBI agent whispered as I feigned calmness talking to Mr X. My head was spinning. Would I cooperate? Damn right I would!
Things calmed down a bit as the FBI agent loaded the drives into his trunk and thanked me for my cooperation. The fellow from Maxtor said they would replace all the drives with brand new ones and also thanked us for our help in sending Mr X up the river, apparently they had been trying to nab this guy for quite a while and now finally had the evidence they needed.
I never heard from Mr X, the FBI, or Maxtor again, except of course for the fresh shipment of factory drives that arrived as promised. After some good-natured ribbing, my partners said that they would take care of procurement from now on.
Coming up...Espionage in the Storage Industry
Who'd have thought that behind the mild mannered exterior lay your dodgy past as an FBI Informant !
Looking forward to the next installments !
Posted by: MikeW | July 22, 2009 at 05:28 AM