Geek Mafia

by Rick Dakan

  "We got it! We got the fucking bastard by the balls now!" shouted Raff. Crewmembers turned in astonishment and started to cheer. As they ran up to hug and congratulate Raff, Paul managed to squeeze past them towards the kitchen and thus avoid being trampled. They buzzed with questions for Raff, who seemed bound and determined to try and answer all of them at once. Apparently he'd found time to check the contents of the hard drives while he was in his own car, out of Paul's view. More members came out from other rooms to see what all the fuss was about. Paul watched from the kitchen entrance, rubbing his bruised back in discomfort.

  When Chloe walked in from the back of the house she made a bee-line for the crowd that had Raff at its center. As if they sensed her presence, the Crewmembers stepped aside so she could embrace her partner in crime. Her hair was still wet and she wore just a loose fitting tank-top and men's boxer shorts. She must have been in the shower when she'd heard Raff come in. Paul straightened up and started to move back into the room but found forward progress impossible as the throng of crewmembers pressed back towards him. He retreated into the kitchen and decided to wait out this burst of piratical camaraderie.

  They went through much the same kind of ritual as they had after they'd helped him get his revenge on his former partners. Paul sat at the kitchen table and drank a beer he'd found in an overflowing cooler beside the refrigerator. They'd planned for a celebration tonight. He listened to Chloe as she took the group through the self-congratulatory debriefing. This time though, Raff did almost as much talking as she did and he certainly got all the biggest laughs. The whole operation had been his idea from its inception and Chloe was a strong enough leader to stand aside and give him his moment in the limelight. Paul thought that she sounded like a proud and indulgent mother.

  Paul drank three beers in the time it took them to retell their tale of victory. The whole Crew had helped out on this job, which was unusual. However, only a few of them had been intimately involved in every detail of the plan, so Chloe and Raff went through the whole thing from the beginning.

  The target had been a man named Jackson Gondry, the CEO of a software development company in nearby Cupertino. A year ago Gondry had started his own company, Advantriq, after a feud with his former partners at Bendix Software got him fired. It took Gondry less than a month to gather start-up money and hire a staff for Advantriq, leaving many industry observers speculating that he'd secretly planned to start his own firm all along. From day one Gondry openly boasted that his new company would put Bendix out of business in less than two years. By all accounts, Gondry was well on his way to fulfilling the boast. Bendix's new software line was late shipping, while Advantriq had gotten a competing product onto the market in less than ten months - a pace unheard of in the software industry.

  Everyone assumed that Gondry must have taken some of his work from Bendix and brought it with him, but there was no way of proving it. Even once the Advantriq software hit the shelves, the Bendrix analysts couldn't find any proof positive that Gondry had illegally used software code he'd developed while working for them. To hear Raff tell it, Bendix had all but given up. If their already delayed next release didn't sell well, CHAPTER 18

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  they were going to have to lay off half their work force, maybe worse.

  In all this Silicon Valley turmoil, Raff saw an opportunity. It was no secret that the new CEO of Bendix, a businessman named Oliver Fruch, hated Gondry beyond all reason. He'd famously thrown a drink in Gondry's face during an industry conference just a few months ago. Even as the rest of the crew had been working on the Comics Con, Raff and a select few had been digging into Fruch's life and history in every way they could.

  It didn't take much digging to get a read on him. Like most Silicon Valley CEO's, he lived at the office, putting in sixteen hour days as a matter of course. He had a wife and son, but scarcely ever saw them except on Sundays. His only other recreation was his weekly volleyball game at a local 24 Hour Fitness. Raff decided to track him down there.

  Raff had also researched Gondry of course, which was easy since the fiery programmer was never shy about talking to the media. He even maintained his own daily blog that served as his favorite forum for criticizing everyone in the world that wasn't him or one of the three or four other people in the universe he respected. Not surprisingly, Fruch came under frequent fire on the blog. Raff bragged that this fact made it almost too easy to approach Fruch one evening at the gym.

  Raff explained: "I just walked up to him and said, 'Hey, you're Oliver Fruch right? You and I should talk, man.' He just kinda looked at me like, 'who the fuck are you.' I said, I'm Larry Carlson, and I used to be Gondry's college roommate. As soon as he heard that he offered to buy me a drink right then and there. So that's what we did."

  As it turned out, one of Gondry's favorite targets on his blog was his former college roommate, someone whom his readers knew only as Larry. Gondry never gave a last name, but he used the name "Larry" as a synonym for the most moronic person imaginable. He constantly wrote stories that referenced idiotic things this former roomie had done in school and even had a regular "Larry of the Week" prize that he awarded to someone in the news who's done something he judged particularly inane. Raff immediately saw potential in the roommate's infamy. He made a diligent search, trying to uncover 'Larry's' true identity but found nothing that pointed to Larry's last name, or even any indication of who he really was.

  "I figured Gondry probably just made this Larry guy up," explained Raff. "He loves to lord it over people stupider than him, but hates it when he's proven wrong by one of them. What better whipping boy than someone you just make up, right? Since there was no sign of the real Larry, I stepped in and took the role for myself. I knew that Fruch had to be reading Gondry's blog. By all accounts he'd become obsessed with the man. And since the only person who Gondry gave more shit to than Fruch was this Larry guy, I figured he had to know who I was. Or who I said I was."

  "Larry" and Fruch hit it off immediately. Raff had read through the whole archive of Gondry's blog and knew every Larry story backwards and forwards. More importantly, he had an alternate version of most of those stories wherein it was Gondry who played the fool, not Larry. Fruch ate this up, excitedly interjecting his own stories of how Gondry had mercilessly slandered him time and again. They ended their conversation hours later, with "Larry" prompting Fruch into expressing his fervent desire to wreak some sort of vengeance on the bastard who'd tormented them both. Unfortunately, they both agreed that, right now anyway, Gondry seemed untouchable. They exchanged business cards before they parted ways for the evening. The seeds had been planted.

  It was while Chloe and Paul were at the beach house that Raff made the follow up call. He waited until Gondry inevitably made yet another scorching critique of Fruch, just to make sure his new "friend" was primed and ready.

  "I told him that an opportunity had presented itself to me and that if he was interested, we might actually have a chance to get that vengeance we'd been dreaming about. He perked right up at that. I said I had an old CHAPTER 18

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  college buddy who was now working with Gondry. We'd all supposedly known each other back in college. It didn't take much to convince Fruch that my fictional friend was willing to sell Gondry out after the villain of our piece had screwed him over one too many times. Fruch couldn't wait for me to tell him more, but I refused to do so over the phone. I said I was scared and hinted I might already be having second thoughts."

  As Paul listened, he recalled some of what Chloe had told him about Raff's particular style. He liked to take risks, particularly risks in the name of verisimilitude. The more nervous and hesitant and even bumbling he came off when dealing with a mark, the more they got sucked into the false reality he was pitching them.

  Occasionally this backfired of course - Raff would convince the target he was so nervous and bumbling that the mark lost confidence in the whole situation and pulled out. But the gamble paid off more often th
an not, and Chloe couldn't fault his style, even if it wasn't really her cup of tea.

  When Fruch and "Larry" finally met up at a Jack in the Box near the fitness club, Raff managed to maneuver the CEO into actively convincing him to reveal his plan for retribution. They agreed on a very simple plan.

  Ralph's mole inside Gondry's company was willing to turn over all sorts of confidential files to him, for the right price. That price was $200,000. Larry said he would put up almost half, if Fruch could come up with the rest. The Crew had already analyzed Fruch's financial situation and experience and analysis told them that Fruch could easily put his hands on a little over 100k without stretching himself too thin.

  "It turned out to be the perfect amount," Raff explained. "He pretended to think about it for a minute, but as soon as I told him we wouldn't have to pay until we received the goods, he was sold. He came in for $112,000

  and even promised me some stock in his company if the purloined data turned out to be as valuable as he thought it would be. I told him I'd make the call and we parted ways with smiles on our faces, although mine was supposed to be a nervous smile."

  This whole scheme also followed another of the Crew's rules that Chloe had explained to Paul. Never steal something that you don't already know how to sell. Raff set up the payday first and then the crew started the hard part - delivering on the goods. They'd just begun this part of the process when Chloe and Paul got back from the beach house and now Chloe took over telling the story.

  "As you know," she said, "I took the news of Raff's little plan pretty well." Everyone laughed at this, which Paul figured meant that she hadn't been pleased at all. "After a little...discussion..." more laughter, "We started the hard part - actually getting the fucking data out of Gondry's company."

  Chloe was the self-proclaimed bitch queen of organization. She got everyone into gear, building on the research Raff and his sub-crew had already done. She quickly decided that a frontal hack assault on Gondry's network from outside wasn't feasible. "The guy might be a prick, but he's smart and his security is top notch."

  The odds of them getting in and out with the data they needed without being noticed were practically nil, if indeed they could get in at all. "Besides," said Chloe with a smile in her voice, "You know me, I prefer the human touch."

  And so they started working the employees for weak links. It didn't take them long to find one. Gondry liked to run his company mean and lean and put all his resources into software engineers and equipment rather than those he referred to as "useless idiots." Thus there was very little non-programming oriented management, such as personnel directors or the like. "Just one part time office manager who paid the bills and, joy of joys, a part time Chief Financial Officer," explained Chloe. Gondry uses a service called CFO On The Go, which provides very competent and experienced CFO's to smaller companies that don't need a full time financial expert. Since Gondry made most of the important decisions about money himself, the On The Go CFO only had to make sure they did all their tax and financial stuff according to the law.

  "This was our guy," interjected Raff. "As soon as I saw the file on him, I knew he was our guy. Fifty-six years old. Divorced with two kids in college, just a few grand in the bank account and an under performing IRA.

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  Like most of these Silicon Valley money guys, he'd been burned badly in the 2000 bubble burst and he was still trying to make up the losses. We just had to find the right lever, and I knew we could tip him."

  Paul listened as Chloe briefly went through the details of how they dug through every inch of the CFO's personal and financial life. Credit card statements from the trash told them where he liked to eat and shop.

  Records from the video store's computer clued them into the kinds of movies he watched and his phone records told them about everyone he talked to. They even knew his golf handicap.

  "He's a pretty normal guy, all things considered. But like most of us he could use a little extra cash. But he's also a decent sort, not at all the type who's likely to steal from work just to make things easier on himself. No way this good citizen would buy into the typical win/win set-up where we both make money on the deal. Sad but true, we had to go win big/lose big for the CFO du jour."

  Paul didn't know for sure what "win big/lose big" meant, but he guessed that it wasn't pleasant. He assumed that the man with the red tie he'd met earlier that day had been the CFO, and he certainly hadn't seemed happy with how things had turned out.

  As Raff explained things - with helpful interjections from the other Crew members who'd been involved in specific aspects of the shakedown - while Gondry had great security, the CFO did not. And he often took his work home with him and left his files wide open on his home computer. And while he didn't have anything particularly useful on his machine about Gondry, he did have more than enough private info about his clients to put his job in jeopardy if those files ever became public. And going public was exactly what Raff and company threatened him with.

  From there it had been pretty straightforward. They contacted him anonymously and proved to him that they knew more about his computer's files than he did. If he played ball, the information remained private. If he didn't, he'd lose his job and maybe his whole career. All he had to do in return was copy some files from Gondry's network. The mark resisted at first, but eventually broke down. Now only one problem remained -

  he didn't actually have access to the parts of the network they wanted data from. Like Chloe had said, Gondry's security was tiptop.

  "Which is where my team comes in," said Bee. It was the diminutive engineer's time to shine and she sounded like a proud school kid describing her prize winning science fair project.

  Their mole was, at best, uncooperative and unwilling to take much in the way of risks on the crew's behalf, even with his career on the line. Chloe had explained that an unwilling co-conspirator was always dangerous.

  You had to know just how far to push him. Too far, and the whole con is blown. They needed him to do something that didn't seem too dangerous.

  "We wanted a modified camera array covering four different departments," Bee explained. "Gondry's security was tight enough that any kind of unauthorized software or key registries we put in place might be detected.

  However, the human security was pretty laughable. The employees are really driven, hard working types, like me. And since they're like me, you know just what that means - they're totally oblivious to the world around them while they're working. Certainly too oblivious to notice something as boring as a new carbon monoxide detector installed above their desk."

  Chloe and Bee had decided to make the CFO's job simple. All he had to do was tell Gondry that they needed new detectors for their insurance and then schedule the appointment. Then Kurt and Filo went in and installed four hidden cameras in the right offices. Each detector had a small camera inside it along with a connection to the phone lines that provided both power and a conduit for the video feed. Installation took place over the lunch hour when all but one of the offices were empty (the large group lunch being a Silicon Valley tradition that's almost as reliable as sunrise and sunset). They also picked a day they knew Gondry would be out of CHAPTER 18

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  town, just to be safe.

  "The number three camera never really gave us much," said Bee. "We placed it at the wrong angle and when the programmer sat down he was taller than expected and blocked the view. But the others worked great! We got them typing their passwords and saw how they navigated their networks and file systems, everything we needed to access the system at will."

  From there it should have been pretty straightforward. The CFO had everything he needed to get whatever data they wanted. Now all they had to do was wait until he went into the office again. This was actually a risky time. Everything was in place, but nothing could get done. The CFO only went in once, maybe twice a week and while they waited for his scheduled day he had plenty of time to get c
old feet, which, of course, he did.

  They'd given him a number (a disposable cell phone) that he could call and leave messages for them at. Two nights before the big day, they left an envelope in his mailbox containing the passwords and file directories they wanted copied, along with instructions to buy a couple dozen flash drives to download the information onto. They'd followed him from a distance to make sure he bought the gear, and monitored his calls and e-mails to make sure he didn't contact the police or, worse, Gondry. He had dinner with a friend, but other than that everything seemed to go as planned.

  "And we all know what happened next," said Chloe, taking the meeting over again. There was a communal groan from the crew. Paul perked up in his shadowy perch in the kitchen and opened up another beer. Maybe this would explain why Raff had suddenly called him in at the last moment.

  Chloe described how the CFO had called and left a message saying the deal was off - that there was no way he was going through with this, damn the consequences. Raff and Chloe had half expected this was coming and they were ready. They had to use the only other lever that they had over their asset: his kids. More specifically, his oldest daughter who, judging from the man's phone calls, was a bit of a wild thing and a constant source of irritation.

  Two days earlier, Raff had called the daughter in her dorm on campus at San Jose State. He told her that she'd won a contest through her cell phone provider, which included a new free phone and a three night trip to Hollywood. Like most college kids, she wasn't one to pass up a good time, especially if it was free, and the daughter squealed with delight. Raff Fed-Exed her the phone (which already had her new number programmed in it) and the tickets - which were for that day. She and her boyfriend barely made it to the airport on time and certainly never bothered to call and tell her parents where she was going.

  When the CFO tried to call things off, Raff called him back and explained that they had kidnapped his daughter and that she'd only be returned safely once he'd done as he was told. He hit the ceiling - started yelling and screaming and threatening to call the police. Raff calmly told him to call his daughter and see for himself how serious they were. When he called, instead of his daughter's usual outgoing message he heard a strange voice (disguised by a gadget Bee whipped up) warning him that she was in safe hands for now, and that she would be returned to him when his job was done. A couple more quick calls revealed that no one else seemed to know where his daughter was either, including his ex-wife. Fortunately he didn't tell her or anyone else that she was missing for fear of panicking them. He called back and said he'd play along.