One of my friends is going to prison at the end of the month. I’ve been thinking about her situation a lot lately. It makes my heart hurt and I wish there was something I could do. I know we must face the consequences of our actions, if not in the legal system then in our souls. But something about her case leads me to believe that the outcome of her trial would have been different had karma been the judge and not a jaded prosecutor in a federal court.
I just wish there was some “undo” button for life. Or that later actions could override previous mistakes. Because part of the frustration of her case is that in the year and a half since the crimes were committed and she’s been waiting for the sentence, she’s changed. Big time.
To give you some background, here is a slice of the article from the Seattle PI that was published. Her case was big news in the area, so it’s not exactly classified content, but I’m not using her name or identifying characteristics because its irrelevant to this entry.
November 11, 2004Four former Microsoft Corp. employees, all of them Seattle-area residents, have been charged with stealing $32.4 million worth of software from the Redmond company. All four defendants, if convicted, face five years' imprisonment and fines of up to $250,000.
The four former employees abused the Internet-based system by which Microsoft employees can order software for business purposes at no cost to themselves. They allegedly manipulated the system to prevent e-mail alerts from being sent to their supervisors or managers about their orders, e-mailing one another instead. Upon receiving the software they ordered -- including expensive packages such as Visio Enterprise 2000 (suggested retail price: $2,000), SQL Server 2000 ($15,000) and SQL Enterprise Server 7.0 ($29,000) -- the four allegedly sold it for personal profit.
That’s the gist of it – or what the media saw. The truth is that she was an addict in the throes of a drug addiction so fierce that both she and I are amazed she is still alive. Heroin addiction is a hideous imprisonment in its own right. A couple of kids in her office came up with this scheme, and asked her if she wanted in on it. She saw it as an opportunity to support her fierce appetite for narcotics. These kids got the software and turned around and sold it to the other shady characters who ended up benefiting far more than the convicted employees.
Microsoft will tell you that SQL Enterprise Server is a $30,000 software package. Did my friend know the suggested retail of the unmarked package when she gladly accepted a couple hundred bucks for this little box? No. But that petty cash seemed like a fortune to someone who was living in her car with a $50/day drug habit. And half of what she did make was stolen from her by the other people involved in the scheme. They were all stabbing each other in the back from every angle.
The kicker of this story is that my friend probably made about $40,000 from this software, half of which was stolen from her and the other half of which was injected into her arm. Do you know what amount she was personally ordered to pay Microsoft when she was sentenced a few months ago? $8.6 Million.
Eight point six million dollars. To Microsoft. Because they miss the money, and the company is going under without it, especially after only making $40 Billion in net profit in 2004. I can’t even begin to do the math, but basically, she could pledge every penny she ever earns for the rest of her life to Bill Gates and it would be a drop in the bucket of her debt to that company which she will take with her to the grave.
Is that fair? I’m not so sure.
I know that she’s also serving 6 months in federal prison and another year on house arrest. I know that she’s sorry. I also know that she’s been 100% clean for well over a year, goes to NA meetings several times a week, has a work-study job, and is finishing school with stellar grades this semester. I also know that I met her while volunteering.
My friend has a special knack for getting scared, ill cats to eat. She hand-feeds them. I watch her every Saturday at the shelter. She hasn’t missed a shift in the past year that I’ve been volunteering with her. She finds the sickest cats at the shelter and feeds them wet food by hand because that’s the only way they’ll eat. She works with the public trying to help homeless animals and educate their people. And at the end of each shift at the shelter, she has developed a binding attachment to at least one particularly large feline and goes home practically in tears because she can’t take them with her.
That was the friend I knew for a while before she disclosed her past – she reads voraciously, is dedicated to her family, builds computers, heals sick animals, is an honest, loyal and selfless friend, shows up on time for everything, has stayed sober through a living hell, and is one of the most up-beat people I know.
Isn’t there some kind of respite? Maybe she earned herself a couple of years behind bars. But a federal sentence doesn’t even compare to the prison she’s going to live in the rest of her life while trying in vain to pay back the corporation she screwed over when she was dying of heroin addiction.
She’s leaving at the end of the month, heading to Tacoma. The thing she’s most upset about is not being able to help the cats while she’s gone. She tries not to think about the amount of money she now owes Microsoft. Instead, she concentrates on the scholarships she applied for so she can continue school when she gets out of prison.
Her story – the specific details of it – is fascinating when she tells it. I think I’m so enthralled because it’s like something out of a movie. I told her to write about it when she’s locked up. There’s not much else to do – why not put together a memoir? Maybe she could publish it and the David vs. Goliath theme of her story would strike the hearts of other recovered souls and she could raise the money somehow. It’s a stretch, I know. But it’s the only thing I can think of to help her.
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