 What if I told you, you shouldn't rip off a hacker? If you like true revenge stories, you found the best place for your vengeful needs. In this episode, we start off with an engineer who likes to solve problems, but in this case, the only tool left is revenge. Followed by a peek behind the scenes of a dirty online business, and how it was destroyed by a hacker who didn't get paid by the greedy boss. Lastly, a harassed employee gets mistreated by her boss, but when she lawyers up-consumed with the need for revenge, he ends up paying dearly. Be sure to send the like button a disguising link to click on, and let it be rickrolled. Let's dive in. Naturally, viewer discretion is advised. These revenge acts might be disturbing to snowflakes. My personal story goes way back and still leaves me fuming. I was a qualified mechanical engineer in the mid-1980s working in textiles, in a little African country. I was part of a management team employed on behalf of a non-government organization. This was funded by the Commonwealth and International Monetary Fund. The goal was to help set up a viable labor-intensive industry for this country in the mid-1990s. To start with, this was a dream job. Free luxury accommodation in a secured village that had a tennis court, swimming pool and a great guest lodge. My contract included, free electric, water and telephone landline, no mobiles at this time. Free private schooling for my three children, a monthly allowance, excluded from salary, a great pension and full gold private medical insurance. The catch was that my husband was not allowed to work here permanently. He could consult for companies, but not be employed. This was part of the legal requirement for me to get work and the residential permit. I was the total breadwinner. I was respected by the management team and my employees. I loved the people of this nation, the culture, the warmth and the willingness to learn, the majority of the employees were literate when they started employment. I helped set up schools to improve their verbal and written skills, not only in English but also in the local official language. I woke each day ready to tackle the challenge, see the staff develop and seeing the women learning and gaining independence. I also saw company flourish and become profitable. The rewards were amazing. As the company became very profitable, it needed to be sold as a going venture to investors in the country. This was part of agreement with the CDC, Commonwealth Development Corporation, and IMF, International Monetary Fund, who up to that point were our bosses. The sale included a clause that assured the continued employment of the local employees for 18 months after the company was taken over. The order books were full and the bank balance was very healthy on the day the new owners came in. The new owners have their headquarters in Southeast Asia. They assign a new CEO, named Gargamel and a new CFO, Asriel. As they come in, trouble begins. Their first order of the day was to remove the majority of previous management and bring their own team in. I was told in no uncertain terms that as a female, I should be home breeding and not working, my time was up. The company starts losing money within 9 months. This new team started blaming the local employees as the reason for the losses. This is where the consultant comes in. Eddie was an independent observer, focused on giving feedback proposals, solutions and finding out what was the root cause. Eddie was empowered to act on behalf of the groups CEO in Southeast Asia, this is important for later. I had to have medical leave for 8 weeks. Whilst on medical leave, the CEO makes the decision to cut off free private education, free utilities, food allowance without adjusting my allowance. So I went from being well rewarded for the job, to having to manage with a salary that was only $100, pay for private school and all other household costs that were previously incorporated into contract. Yes the company can do this, basically a new contract was underwritten as part of the new ownership. As a true expat employee, the company owns you totally. They own the permits that allow you to work and live in the country. I made a formal complaint, but was told if I didn't like it, the company would inform the country government that I had been fired due to not being qualified. This would have meant 48 hours to leave the country with no support, no possibility of getting any of our personal belongings shipped. It could have ended potentially worse due to a frozen bank account, as the local government would see this as fraud and could even result in a possible police record. My family would lose everything and become destitute. On my return to work I was demoted and they placed their own man to run my previous department, engineering and maintenance. I go to introduce myself to my new manager, let's name him Joffrey. Joffrey refuses to shake hands and states that he is there to make my life hell and remove me from the company. I was shocked, I could only see red. This once amazing company I helped build was being destroyed by these incompetent managers, and now they are trying to destroy me and threaten my family's well-being. No one threatens my family's well-being and gets away with it. This experience was the last drop. It made me shift my entire focus on ensuring the downfall of management. I started to investigate what was going on. In the first 12 months that this new management team has taken over, the company is losing money and is in serious debt. New equipment that had been installed by the non-government organization, NGO, has to be sold to help pay salaries. The pension fund was found to be underfunded. Management blamed the NGO for having taken money out when they sold the company. This new management team has, somehow, brought over extended families. Younger children were all being educated in top universities either in South Africa or even the UK, younger children in top private schools. There was also extended house staff including drivers, all of this coming out as losses in the company books. To top it up, I discovered that Joffrey's university doctorate degree, was fake. This management team treats the local staff as subhuman, I had enough of this crap. Time to sort these snowflakes out. I wanted to prove the current boss is not qualified and what he says he is, so I talked to Eddie about my suspicions. I showed him the transcript from telephone conversation with the university that he had claimed as having a PhD from. He's seriously dumbfounded and is intrigued. We set a trap. There was a set of machines that were seriously underperforming, Eddie and I work out a plan. I walk into a meeting late, I was to be quiet until Eddie asked me to contribute, we wanted to give Joffrey enough rope. In the meeting I sit quietly whilst Joffrey blames the local operators, the local maintenance fitters and everyone else for all the woes that are happening, including why we can't meet the order book demands. Eddie sweetly asks if there is a possibility of a mechanical issue, Joffrey denies it. Eddie then asks me for my opinion. I explained that Bob has been changing suppliers of critical components to cheaper versions, but though still cost the same on the official books. I had evidence that demonstrated that Joffrey was receiving a significant percentage of the difference on the side, whilst company charged the inflated prices. I also stated that I could fix the problem using the correct components. If I was wrong then by all means, fire me. Eddie sets a challenge for me and Joffrey, each of us has a team of fitters and our chosen components. Joffrey storms to shop floor and does his usual screaming at everyone. I go down and explain what I was trying to achieve and how it would benefit the operators and get the project going. At the end of the week, we both had to report back to management team. Eddie had asked a few operators, mechanics and production supervisors how Joffrey worked and if there was any attempt to sabotage my project. Needless to say, Joffrey tried everything to ensure my team was not successful, but he never had the support of the locals and his team. They already hated him. Eddie gives Joffrey a chance to come clean, but Joffrey still stated I was a liar and knew nothing. Eddie stands up and goes to the door, opens it and outside is Joffrey's family. Eddie's investigation had confirmed what I had stated, and had organized the drivers and contacts to fly to South Africa, and come to the office. Joffrey's children were drafted from schools and universities, to come to the office. And for his kid studying in the UK, the university was informed no company funds would be sent. Eddie proceeded to give each of Joffrey's family members plane tickets for the following morning. Company security guards and police were sent with Joffrey to his bank where his funds were frozen due to fraudulent transactions. Joffrey accepted a plea bargain, he will not be welcome to stay in Africa again and his home country police were informed. When he landed in his home country, the head office had organized a police escort. Joffrey was unemployable and his family greatly shamed. I hope he got his just desserts, couldn't care less about him. Stage 1 complete, stage 2 initiated for the final event, prove Gargamel and Asriel have been defrauding the company and the country. Gargamel and Asriel were still in charge of the company, now 18 months from takeover. Remember the clause in the contract that the workforce could not be touched for 18 months, this was lifted and the workers were not protected anymore. Gargamel and Asriel called an all-site meeting. They stood in front of the workers with crocodile tears running down their faces. Telling how the NGO had lied about the company orders and profitability, how they are trying their best, but the company is really struggling and people will lose their jobs. They announced a reduction of 66% of the workforce. I had been working closely with Gargamel and Asriel's secretary, the accountant and the purchasing officer, so had been able to access the info needed. Survival kicked in. As I was part of the original management team, I had the original accounts that were audited as part of the CDC and IMF funding for the NGO. In the 18 months, I accumulated information on the losses being shown and the missing money going offshore into private accounts and not the head office accounts. You see, these two did not respect women or the locals, they assumed that what was being done would not be picked up. If they had bothered to understand who they employed in the office, they would have found that the purchase officer and the accounting supervisor were qualified accountants with close links to government, the banks and they were. You're right, women. I had explained to the secretary, the accountant and purchasing officer that there would be a time when we needed evidence to safeguard money and people's livelihood. So the files had been building up from months and months to over a year. I talked to Eddie and given the evidence we had been accumulating, it was what he needed. Gargamel calls me to the office to tell me that I am redundant with immediate effect. He also stated that for me to be able to stay in the country to sort out my family affairs, I would owe the company rent that was twice my given allowance. I lost my cool. I literally turned around and explained that in less than 24 hours, Gargamel would have no future. His family would have no future, no matter where they run. They would be found. I already knew this to be true, as Eddie already had the wheels in motion. This time, the group chairman walks in on my heated conversation together with the IMF representative and Azriel. Gargamel was fired on the spot, loaded onto a plane with an international warrant for fraud. The IMF pursued this fully and Gargamel was screwed. A stain on your trustworthiness in this Southeast Asian country would mean you are untouchable. In a bad way. Azriel didn't dare much better. He was locally arrested, denied access, fined and the IMF did the same to him as what had happened to Gargamel. Only difference was that Azriel willingly ratted Gargamel for all he was worth. As for me. The company limped along but I no longer trusted anyone from that group. Myself and my husband found employment in another regional country. This time both of us had work permits and airtight contracts. No one will ever screw us over or make us feel like slaves. I'm willing to share my story anonymously, due to my job activities were technically not so legal. So here we go. Once upon a time, two years ago now, I was on disability leave from work and it wasn't enough to cover the bills. So I tried selling my artwork, granted it wasn't very good at the time, I was trying to appeal to niche fandoms that had no artwork, didn't go well. So one day while playing a game to cool off, the game we're talking about features mass online multiplayer vehicular shenanigans and gun slinging fun, very popular at the time compared to today. During one gaming session in the chat, someone entered and was advertising cheap in game currency. He was able to do so because he hacked in with a mod menu. I asked if they wanted someone to help advertise. I was accepted. Now as part of the details of the job, the first thing you did was bring people into the discord server after having them contact you directly. It helped to have a short username. You bring them into the server and they choose from several packages listed on the website. If you made a sale you got a cut of the profit? I was making about $200 a month, enough to help with bills. I was a selling machine and climbed the ranks fast enough to be granted access to higher ranking abilities, like using the menu to hack money into people's accounts, change their levels, whatever they wanted. I used my powers for good and kicked out malicious hackers every time I encountered one. I was third in command and loved helping people less fortunate to keep up with the insane inflation problem the game company created, with their tens of millions of dollars required to access the full game experience. I was getting people into airplanes and bunkers. I was proud of myself. Now for the rich white boy. He was the one who created the business and he thought of himself as a big deal, a hot shot, because he had a very high view count on his YouTube channel dedicated to fidget spinners. It was kind of funny and we would tease him about it. So the power and glory was all going to his head. His second in command, Red, became fast friends with me and together we dominated the game, with spinner sitting back and taking a 50% cut on all sales while doing no work. He kept bragging about his new computer parts, his huge house. He waved his parents' wealth in our faces. Red was having trouble keeping up with his bills too. Both of us needed the sales so we worked our butts off. Spinner's empire grew with the two of us bringing in 400 people each. The discord server was massive and we were proud of our accomplishment. Out of the blue, the money stopped coming in from spinner. His PayPal was hooked up to the business. Now this guy was 17 at the time, a fake hacker type and took all the credit for himself on creating the menu. He didn't create it, he bought it. The safety measures we took to protect ourselves from getting caught was a safeguard, which was made by Red. Red and I hounded him for two weeks to pay us. I sent in a payment ticket for my daily commission to PayPal. Red came back and stopped me from pursuing further, as he was formulating a plan. I waited. He told me in detail what we were to do, as the pair who built this company to what it was, we had the tools and knowledge. It was time to topple the giant we created. In the middle of the night while spinner was asleep we took control of the server. One by one we kicked each person out, a thousand users gone in about 10 minutes. The final icing on the cake, we deleted the entire server. Spinner was furious and blamed me for it all. He didn't do a single bit of work, the whole archive or users was created by Red and I, spinner only had 12. A week later, spinner tried to intimidate me, though I'm far more tech savvy than I let on. He tried to dox me with no success in front of his small gang of 13-year-old lackeys. I laughed in his face when he read the incorrect address and told him to buzz off. I was shocked his mindless worshipers were still trying to scare me afterwards, I posted some artwork online and would get a comment like, How does it feel to have no internet? I would just report the comment and go on merry way. The aftermath, spinner could never rebuild what we created and was left alone with his destroyed online empire. He tried to rebuild and decided to take the 100% pay cut for the next line of cronies, never letting them know the previous sellers and hackers got a decent commission rate. Proves he was scum until the very end of the day. He never reached 100 users and gave up a couple months later. We had a mole who knew what he did to us and decided to kiss his booty for our personal benefit. I paid the piper eventually and lost everything on my account. I don't regret what I did. I still think the official company is scum and horribly greedy to lock away parts of the game, unless you're willing to pay a few hundred dollars for their legitimate currency. I still look at it as helping people out. Six months prior to the start of the story, we had a change up at the company I worked for. The old owner was a great guy that was retiring and handing the company off to his son, a real piece of do-do just out of business school type. Let's name him Marcelo. Marcelo, with the mentality that the company is now his, went about restructuring, namely reassigning teams to different projects, and leaving those that remained in their old positions to pick up double, if not triple the workload. He did this all in the name of saving a little money. Unfortunately my department, safety and engineering, of which I was the team lead, was not spared from this effort. In the end, I headed out with the boss and department head, ultimately costing the company three months of my entire department working 80 plus hour weeks, and forcing a huge year-end bonus to be paid out to us. Unfortunately after my initial meeting with Marcelo, he took a liking to me, in a really bad way. Essentially he really liked me, and wanted to go out with me, or share sleepy time tea with me, or however you want to put it. He even enlisted his friends and secretaries to help him. It went on for months, just blatant harassment on the work floor. They even made comments about me losing my late husband, that I should just get back on the horse, so to speak. I kept everything, every email, every voicemail and went to my best friend who happens to be a really good lawyer, a contract lawyer to be exact, so not exactly their area of expertise, but they knew enough to help. This friend drafted a letter to the boss, essentially a stop or we're going to start a big case over this kind of thing. And everything seemed to have stopped. However, I was then moved from working in office to a work from home arrangement. I knew what was coming. They were going to do their best to get rid of me, so I started documenting everything. But as luck would happen, I received an email chain from the bosses, a good friend of mine in the office who was in the email chain added me to the CC list. And wouldn't you know, it was back and forth communication of them discussing how they would get rid of me and pin the blame on me. The email chain was just disgusting. They hated me so badly and wanted me gone, but because of my contract they would have to buy me out. But being the cheapskates they are, they wanted me gone for free, so the company bosses started a campaign to try and torment me. They first tried to say that, because now I work from home they were required to install cameras in my home office to make sure I was being productive, luckily that did not work, you have to love contracts. They also tried assigning an impossible workload to me. But luckily my team and I were almost like family and they picked up the slack. After three months of this crap I get an email and a phone call from the HR department saying I was getting laid off indefinitely, because there was just no work for me. This was complete due to given that we had several dozen projects we were working on. On a side note, in Ontario there is no such thing as a layoff, as, in the court's eyes, being laid off is considered an active dismissal, which is essentially the same as being fired. After this conversation with HR I call my lawyer friend, almost in tears just shouting. Look what they are doing to me, help. She calms me down and tells me, this is such a good thing, considering we have so much evidence against them. I had already forwarded and printed everything off that was sent to me, and it was lucky I did, because a scant few hours after I was laid off, my computer was remotely wiped clean. Everything was gone, leaving just a blank desktop. When I called the HR department to get copies of all my filed complaints, what do you know, everything was gone. In their place was a bunch of crap reprimands that never happened, that I never signed or saw, dating months and months back, and all signed by the new boss Marcelo. Despite the fact that they were dated before he ever took control of the company. It was clear they were total made up excrements, but I got copies of everything to add to my stack of records. I texted all my old colleagues to let them know what was happening, and that I am basically gone. Like I said earlier, we were like family, and with me on the way out they started looking for better employment. Not only that, but they contacted all their friends who worked for the company to do the same. I was laid off on a Monday, and on Thursday I walked into the office with my employment lawyer. I swear, the main secretary was on the phone to security the second she saw me walk in, and they were at the door in a matter of a minute. My lawyer simply handed her a legal document, a summons to meet for mediation at his office on the next Friday. During the following week I received so many calls and text messages from the bosses, friends, secretaries, and people I knew in the office to just be friendly with the owner. To just drop it, and that they wanted to bring me back and forget about everything. Like hell I was going back to such a hostile work environment. Friday finally comes in into my lawyer's office. My former boss walks in with a squad of four of his lawyers to settle the matter. And off the bat he offers me three months' severance to end all of this, because I didn't have any evidence to rebut the fake paperwork they had on file. At this point my lawyer starts to bring out all the paperwork we had, namely copies of every complaint I had ever filed which were all signed by the bosses, HR, and myself. Luckily for our case, I had made sure to take a copy of each complaint when it was written up. They didn't think I had anything? Oh boy were they wrong. My lawyer made the case that in court it'd be obvious that all the paperwork they had on their end were forgeries. Since nothing was signed by me. He also pointed out that there were dates with the boss's signature where he wasn't in the country, let alone working for the company yet. At that point the boss and his lawyers went to speak privately. After about half an hour they came back with a much better offer, a full year's salary. But my lawyer was like nah, we'll just go with what the contract says plus go for damages in court. Given the recent change over at the company. The lawyers seemed to know they couldn't afford this going to court, not to mention it would be so bad for the company's reputation. So they basically rolled over and asked, what do you want? We demanded five years salary plus the average bonus I would have made for each year, plus all the legal fees paid. It was a big juicy win. But it didn't end there. I got a taste of blood and wanted more. I made phone calls to several companies where I had contacts and found jobs for every member of my team, and several members of other teams. By the end of a week the company lost 10 of its most talented people. Not to mention most of those people had friends and colleagues that ended up following them to their new employers. The fallout was really bad. Before all of this they had the pick of the litter when new university students graduated. But now, because they lost almost all of their senior people, they had no one to mentor new employees. Plus word got out fast how they treat workers like doodoo. So no one with any talent would even think of getting near the company. As of today the company is just a shell of its former self. It's still big, but it bleeds money. They also have a problem with permanent staffing and are paying out the nose to hire subcontractors. Let's just say they don't make money like they use to. In fact, they have not started any new projects in like nine months. If something isn't done on the side of management to improve things fast, they will likely be going bankrupt in the very near future. Thank you for enjoying this episode, which was made with artificial love. Subscribe or give royal ASMR sugar by avenging the like button. Could you imagine doing one of these acts yourself? Share your experience below. I'll join the conversation.