If your response is, "What Scandal?" don't be ashamed. We're not talking Teapot Dome here.
Patricia Dunn, former Chairman of Hewlett-Packard, and four lesser lights were charged Wednesday in connection with a three-year company investigation into corporate boardroom information leaks. I can see your eyelids getting heavy already. The details won't perk you up much.
Ever since the ousting (not "outing") of Carly Fiorina as Chairman, the HP boardroom has been a virtual colander of information. Even stories about leaks were leaked. Concerned/enraged that there was a loose tongue in their midst, Ms. Dunn launched an investigation. The characters that were enlisted in this probe go by their current title... co-defendants. They include:
Kevin Hunsaker former HP ethics lawyer. (Mr Hunsaker has also been indicted separately for the unspeakable crime of using the word "ethics" and "lawyer" in the same title.)
Ronald DeLia of Security Outsourcing
Matthew DePante of Action Research
Although I have not seen bios or photos of these security specialists but it would not surprise me to learn that they are ex-cops who are showing the effects of too many Big Macs. Exactly where do you look in the phonebook for people willing to break the law for your company. Maybe Ms. Dunn ran an ad.
WANTED
knuckle-dragging, over-weight, former policeman, to collect evidence of yacking out of school. Adherence to the law not a requirement. Qualifications should include, beat-up old car, badly tailored suit, Brooklyn accent, complete absence of ethics. Smoking a plus. Fedora optional.
These would-be Sam Spades are charged with; fraudulently obtaining private information from a public utility, accessing computer data without permission, identity theft and the ever popular conspiracy. Wow! Move over Hannibal Lecter.
After watching a couple of episodes of CSI, deeds like this don't exactly make your blood run cold. Having been raised on the Rockford Files, I didn't even know that most of this activity was criminal. Who knew that you could be tossed in the hooskow for impersonating someone's cousin in order to get a little information from the phone company? As to accessing someone's computer, I thought that companies did that all the time hunting for employees who surf porn sites. I guess the rules are different in the California.
Are you asleep yet?
Sensing an "Elliot Spitzer Moment", California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has filed charges in plenty of time to make the morning editions on the East Coast. This isn't exactly Enron but one takes what one can get. Besides does anyone remember who prosecuted Ken Lay? The trick here will be to keep Californians, and the rest of the country, awake long enough to showcase a trial.
Americans bore easily.(Remember space travel?) The country has watched real villains like Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom and Ken Lay (nice exit) of Enron be convicted of fleecing thousands of widows and orphans out of their pensions. Watching Patty Dunn standing in the dock answering charges of pilfering phone records isn't exactly the "ripped from the headlines" stuff that makes Law and Order so popular.
Even the readership of Barron's might nod off while following this story. (Of course many Barron's readers doze before they get to the newsstand.) I'm afraid that a scandal where nobody took their pants off and no weapon deadlier than a lawyer's tongue was involved, isn't going to attract much ink.
A word to prosecutors everywhere, if you want to be launched into the governor's mansion by indicting corporate evildoers, pick a company where Paris Hilton sits on the board.
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