Cyberbust!

This was the allure that got me into this business:

Five thirty on a dark Saturday morning, I led an experienced team in a court-ordered break in to investigate a number of companies allegedly linked to illegal operations taking place in a single building south of Los Angeles. In this concrete-slab tilt-up building so typical of California industrial parks were slightly less than a dozen companies providing credit card and bounced check processing services. These companies were spawned from a single company that the State Court had just recently judged to be stolen, in its entirety, two years before. Two employees with minority shareholdings, it seems, hijacked the hard drive from the server leaving bogus drives as replacements, thereby taking the clients, the vendors and all future transactions. The majority owner of the original company was left with the existing cash, which was not much, the lease to the building, furniture and little else. He pursued the thieves in the courts for two years, finally receiving a judgment for $24 million and a court order to seize the business to collect evidence of the commingling of assets between the companies. The seizure was foiled because the defendants placed the stolen company into bankruptcy, thereby forcing a change in venue from state to federal court. This bankruptcy was filed, of course, after the most valuable assets were transferred from the bankrupted company to the other legal entities, leaving the owner with a bankrupt company worth far less than his $24 million judgment. This crime is one example of how difficult it is to catch up with cunning thieves who understand the subtleties of electronic forms of data and the law.