A New York IT admin, angry at being laid off, now faces 5 years in prison for sending his former employer  email threats and attempting to extort money from them.

Viktor Savtyrev, 29, pleaded guilty to extortion after he threatening emails and attempting to extort money from his former comapny. Here’s an excerpt from the story:

Savtyrev threatened his former employers with computer crashes. He also threatened to enlist Eastern European hackers to launch attacks against his former employer, New York investment firm Third Avenue Management.

“My comrades for a small fee are able to help me out with bridging the firewall security and carry out data destruction and virus outbreak,” Savtyrev wrote in an e-mail to the company, according to the complaint. “I located the names and e-mail addresses of the editors of Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and the Daily News and all of them should be very interested in getting an article about a mutual fund (losing) data because some “Crazy Russian’ (this is the name of the article which I wrote last night), was fired after 5 years of loyal service.”

Unfortunately for Savtyrev, using email was a big mistake. The company promptly turned them over to the FBI and he was quickly tracked down. With layoffs at an all time high, it’s possible that other such incidents may happen. While you can’t blame someone for being angry over a layoff, such behavior is very unacceptable. If your company is planning any layoffs, make sure any login info and accounts that a laid off employee may have are changed or deleted immediately, just to be safe.

IT Admin Pleads Guilty to Email Extortion

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We’ve heard the stories before. A person in a leadership position in the community sends an email which evokes feelings or images of racial stereotyping. Last February it was the Mayor of Los Alamitos, California, who sent an email with images of watermelons on the front lawn of the White House right around Easter time.

You’d think people would learn that by sending emails to a company wide distribution list, or even to an internal department, that it does not make that email protected from being passed to the outside world.

So it has happened again. This time it was a Florida teacher at a middle school in Pensacola who has now found herself the subject of much scrutiny and contempt for a recently released email that she wrote to the assistant principal. The subject line read “I HAVE HAD IT” and in her email she referred to the janitor of her classroom as “the N” and also as “Miss Maid”.

Jennifer Dickens, who is white and age 46, used the racial slur when she complained about the quality of the janitor’s work in her classroom. The janitor is black.

Ms Dickens began her email with the line, “I have had it with the n who is supposed to be cleaning my room!” She continued her complaint by referring to the janitor as “…Miss Maid doesn’t bother to even empty both my trash cans which sometimes contain food.” After some more comments Ms. Dickens signed her letter as, “Grumpily Yours, ~Jennifer”

The Escambia County School District said that Ms. Dickens has been disciplined for the March 12 email but they did not say what form of discipline was applied.

Following the incident, Ms Dickens sent an email to the local newspaper in which she apologized for her “stupid” and “inexcusable” actions. She also wrote that as part of her discipline she “…was required to take a course of study on cultural sensitivity, which has been a real eye-opener for me.” She apologized to friends, family and co-workers.

Unfortunately this is not the last time that racial slurs will be expressed by employees who work for the public. Or for that matter by employees who work for the private sector.

Perhaps email administrators should consider the use of filters for outgoing email. Look for keywords and if found then return the email to the sender explaining why the email was not delivered and noting a violation of company email policy or standards.

Consider the use of a “racial slander filter” as a method of “scrubbing” outgoing email. This would be one way for email administrators to be proactive in ensuring company email policies are met and that a company’s – or in this case a school administration’s – reputation is maintained and protected.

Florida Teacher Disciplined for Racial Email

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A DirecTV customer in Memphis, TN says a customer service representative sent her a threatening email after she called to pay her bill. Here’s an excerpt from the story:

A DirecTV satellite dish still sits on top of Sangueta Hawkins’ home, but for how much longer? She doesn’t know. On Monday, Hawkins says she called DirecTV customer service to help her pay her bill online. After being on the phone with the third representative, for 30 minutes, she paid and hung up.

Just minutes later she says she got an email from that same customer service representative, saying she and her family would die.

She says her email address on her DirecTV profile was also changed to Sangueta.FOOL.Hawkins. Memphian Quinton Ford was amazed at the allegations, “What would possess them to come towards their own customers like that”?

Sounds unbelievable that someone would treat a customer that way, doesn’t it? There were no details given for why it took 3 reps and at least half an hour just to pay her bill, but such behavior is still inexcusable. DirecTV said they’ve found the employee responsible but didn’t say if he/she had been terminated or even disciplined. Hawkins meanwhile has retained a lawyer.

This is a strong reminder that no matter how angry a customer may make you, always think before hitting send. In fact if you are angry, it’s best to step away from the computer and take some time to cool off before firing off an email. Professionalism demands putting the company’s interest before your feelings. Your job, and your company’s reputation may depend on it.

DirecTV Employee Accused of Sending Threatening Email to Customer

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NPR’s Blog of the Nation blog has a humorous article about email blunders. We’ve all got one in our history, admit it! Here’s an excerpt:

Have you ever hit “reply-all” to an e-mail when you wanted only the sender to see your snarky remarks about the boss? Or received an e-mail from a friend you want to pass along to others, including your caustic comments about his girlfriend, but hit “reply” instead of “forward?” 

Email gaffes can be merely embarrassing or downright career threatening. To avoid them, there are a few things you can do. First, never email when angry, intoxicated or otherwise not in a calm and rational mood. Second, double check your spellchecker! The auto-correct feature isn’t always well… correct. Third, resist the temptation to hit Reply All unless absolutely necessary, always use BCC rather than CC and check and double check the TO: line before hitting that send button.

We’d like to know your most embarrassing email gaffe. Leave a comment and share!

Preventing Email Gaffes

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The DeathbyEmail blog is reporting that a senior aide to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has resigned following the discovery of several emails he sent in an attempt to organize a smear campaign against members of the Conservative Party, which are the PM’s rivals. The aide, Damian McBride, was previously Brown’s political spokesperson. Here’s a look at what the emails contained:

McBride suggested the website spread false rumors that pictures exist of Osborne “posing in a bra, knickers and suspenders” and “with his face ‘blacked up’,” adding: “He wouldn’t be the first student to do some cross-dressing at university. But … why would a student in the late 1980s black up his face for the amusement of friends in their private college rooms? This in the era when young Tories wore ‘Hang Mandela’ T-shirts.”

McBride wrote: “Embarrassing photos have followed George Osborne around throughout his career: posing in his Bullingdon Club uniform at Oxford, lying on the carpet at home in his permed mullet, playing Monopoly with his fellow viscounts and standing in an … embrace with a prostitute at a party in London. But he knows that the most embarrassing photos from his past have yet to emerge.”  (This is in a reference to pictures published in 2005 of shadow chancellor George Osborne with a prostitute, Natalie Rowe, taken 12 years earlier, and a notorious Bullingdon Club photograph of Osborne taken when he was at Oxford.  The Bullingdon Club is well-known for its members’ wealth and rowdiness.)

McBride suggested spreading gossip, entirely unfounded, that Conservative Party leader David Cameron may have suffered from a sexually transmitted disease.

Yet another case of a high ranking political official not thinking before he hit send. When will they learn? A very good rule of thumb when it comes to sending emails is to never send anything  you wouldn’t be comfortable seeing on the front page of the newspaper. Careless emails can damage company reputations, cost jobs and customers, and even get you in legal trouble. Think about that!

Senior Aide to British PM Resigns in Email Scandal

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