‘Small Businesses’ Category

Video: Sears sends felon and stalker into woman’s home

Jason Meinke was employed by a Sears contractor and sent into homes to clean ducts despite his criminal history that included misdemeanor and felony convictions, including a felony aggravated stalking conviction. When he was sent to clean Carrie Smith’s air ducts, she says her nightmare started, as reported by Scott Lewis of Detroit ABC affiliate WXYZ (video below):

Smith went into the basement with Meinke’s partner to check out the air ducts. When she came upstairs, she saw Meinke coming out of her bedroom, and it gave her the creeps.

The next day Smith says, “I started receiving vulgar sexual text messages.”

Several vulgar texts including one that talked about having someone urinate in their mouth. Smith called police, and they traced the messages to Meinke’s cell phone. He told the cops his phone had been stolen and he later got it back. Police didn’t buy it and they discovered something else disturbing when they went to Carrie Smith’s house. Someone had unlocked a window behind the bushes and left it cracked open.

“It petrified me,” said Smith. “I thought he was going to come into my home and do something.”

As it turns out, the Sears contract did conduct a background check on Meinke. It showed no records for him, despite the fact that he had recently been released from prison.

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by Scott Lewis about the dangers of cheap background checks. In the two-part news story below, Scott explores Meinke’s history and questions how Sears, through a contractor, could send him into customers’ homes. I’m quoted near the end of  both stories. The second video tells the sad story of Sue Weaver, who was murdered by an in-home service provider. Her sister, Lucia Bone, started a nonprofit, the Sue Weaver C.A.U.S.E., to bring attention to the issue of improperly screened serviceworkers being sent into homes.

Part one (aired 11/06/2011):

Part two (aired 11/07/2011):

 

Two Employers, Two Victims, Two Convictions for Computer “Guru”

Stephen Robertson, a self-described computer “guru”, could be the poster boy for Bad Hire Days.

Robertson worked for Corgan Associates, a Dallas architecture and interior design firm, and was terminated on December 18, 1998 for “theft, dishonesty, and misuse of the company’s computer system to hack into other companies’ computers,” according to documents filed by prosecutors in Dallas County, Texas.

According to those documents, three days later, on December 21st, Robertson hacked into Corgan Associates’ computer network. His intrusion was detected and on December 29th, he signed an agreement not to access Corgan Associates computer network again.

Employer Lesson #1: At the root of behavioral event interviewing is the idea that past performance predicts future performance.  This idea is not restricted to job performance. If you catch an employee hacking other companies’ networks, you should probably evaluate your own network security when you terminate him. Then, when the former employee actually does hack into your network, don’t give him yet another free pass!

One assumes that Corgan Associates felt that they had dodged a bullet and were glad to see the last of Stephen Robertson. Except that they weren’t – not by a long shot.

Less than two weeks later, on January 11, 1999, Robertson went to work for the movie theater chain Cinemark as a systems administrator.

Employer Lesson #2: Court documents do not indicate whether Cinemark attempted to verify Robertson’s prior employment at Corgan Associates or, if they did, whether they inquired into his reason for termination or eligibility for rehire. Imperative Information Group always recommends that prospective employers also ask former employers: Whether the individual ever acted in a threatening, coercive, or abusive manner, Whether there was ever any reason to question the individuals’ integrity or honesty, and If there is anything of which an employer considering this individual for a security-sensitive position should be aware (and the point of Bad Hire Days is that all positions are security sensitive). Had Cinemark asked these questions and Corgan Associates chosen to answer them directly a lot of headaches might have been avoided.

On March 31, 2001, while still employed at Cinemark, court documents indicate that Robertson used a “back door” he had built into Corgan Associates network more than two years earlier.  Robertson had access to Corgan Associates’ network for one hour, twenty six minutes, and fifty two seconds, during which time he made changes to key network data. He also sent an anonymous email (or so he thought) to a former colleague at Corgan Associates, taunting him for the insecurity of his network. (See employer lesson #1 above.)

Local authorities were contacted and on August 30, 2001, Robertson (who still worked for Cinemark) was indicted in a Dallas County district court.

Six months later, on February 13, 2002, Robertson pleaded guilty to “breach of computer security,” a state jail felony. In the courts’ documents, he admits that he illegally accessed and damaged Corgan Associates’ network. As a part of his plea deal, he was given five years of deferred probation, which meant that if he managed to stay out of trouble for five years, the indictment against him would be dismissed. He was fined $1,500 and ordered to pay Corgan Associates restitution in the amount of $5,749.

Employer Lesson #3: This is a good example of why employers should (where not prohibited by state law) include dismissed cases (such as deferred adjudication cases where the probation has been completed) in their examination of an applicant’s criminal history. Robertson admitted in writing to the misconduct with which he was charged. An employer’s concern is whether it is reasonable to believe that the person engaged in the conduct alleged – not the shenanigans of the court system to expedite the processing of criminal cases through their backlogged system.

The Dallas County district court’s documents clearly list his employer as Cinemark, which begs the question of whether they were made aware of Robertson’s legal problems by the court or his probation officer. It is hard to imagine that they were aware of the admissions in his plea agreement and continued to grant him access to their own network.

Employer Lesson #4: Many of the defendants in the criminal justice system are employed at the time of their arrest. Many are convicted over the course of their employment and, if no jail time is required during the work week, the employer is often unaware of the conviction. Employers should have policies that require employees to report any arrests to HR immediately. Employers should also consider a policy that requires background checks over the course of employment. Many of Imperative Information Group’s clients run criminal background checks on an annual or bi-annual basis. Also, anyone who drives in the course of business should also have a driving history requested on an annual basis.

Certainly Robertson had learned his lesson from all of these troubles and straightened his life out to become a model citizen and employee, one might say. Well, not quite.

Two and half years after his guilty plea in Dallas County, Robertson committed a new computer offense – this time against Cinemark.

In mid-2004, Cinemark moved Robertson to “contractor status” and told him that his services would no longer be needed after that November. On November 19, 2004, Robertson illegally accessed Cinemark’s network and, according to his later admission in federal court, “removed some of my personal files, accessed a SQL server and stopped the service for financial applications… deleted a 60 GB PeopleSoft database, and stopped the automatic routines for the Cinemark server.”

The US Secret Service investigated this offense and Robertson was indicted in federal court for computer sabotage.

On December 12, 2006, Robertson’s Dallas County probation was discharged unsatisfactorily with a note that he was now in federal custody. (See employer lesson #3 above.)

On January 11, 2007, Robertson entered into a plea agreement with the federal prosecutor. He pleaded guilty to computer sabotage and was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison followed by three years of probation. He was also ordered to pay Cinemark $106,300 in restitution. He was released from the Federal Bureau of Prisons on September 29, 2009 (less than 41 months most likely because of time served awaiting trial and good time received) and will likely be on probation until 2012.

Now here’s the kicker - while his criminal history would dissuade almost any employer from hiring him in any capacity that dealt with computers, Robertson has formed his own consulting practice according to his LinkedIn profile and professional website. Clients listed since his release include The City of Dallas and Parkland Health and Hospital System (Dallas’ public hospital system).

Employer Lesson #5: Even though they are not bona-fide employees, companies are often held responsible for the actions of contractors. Likewise, once an individual has access to your premises (real or virtual), their status as an employee has little bearing on the amount of damage they can do to your assets, reputation, people, customers, or the general public. Procurement, HR, and other departments need to cooperate to ensure that the same “standard of care” that is applied to employees is applied to contract and consulting staff.

Sex Offender Caught Working As Cookie Monster

QC Characters is (was) a new business startup in Iowa that hoped to provide actors dressed as popular children’s characters for parties and special events.

Unfortunately, one of QC Character’s first hires was James Lester Rogers. The company sent Rogers dressed as the Sesame Street character called Cookie Monster to the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds to drum up a little business. While Rogers was at the entrance to the fairgrounds, he saw an old acquaintance and removed his Cookie Monster head to say hello to him. In the excitement of his new job and being reacquainted with his old friend, Rogers forgot several things:

Clearly, there are no IQ requirements to work as Cookie Monster. (Kermit on the other hand…)

Rogers was previously convicted of committing lascivious acts with a child in Linn County, Iowa and is listed on the Iowa Sex Offender Registry. He also had two contempt of court findings against him subsequent to his conviction.

QC Characters’ owner admitted to news sources that he made a serious mistake by not running a background check on Rogers. “I should have took my time, and done a background check but … you learn from your mistakes.” He says that he had intended to send Rogers to children’s parties and other events, which also would have been a violation of the terms of Rogers’ sex offender registration. Fortunately, the business was so new (or ill-conceived) that they had not yet had any customers. Rogers was quickly arrested (imagine having to move through Central Booking in a Cookie Monster outfit) and, we assume, QC Characters has changed its name because of all of the bad publicity.

Many inexperienced employers make the similar mistakes in underestimating the risks associated with hiring people without first conducting a background check. You can bet that the owner of QC-Characters won’t make that mistake again.

Sex offender assigned to Alzheimer’s care facility

Michael Gilbert is a registered sex offender convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child (12 year old female) and was released from parole in August 2005. (He was also on federal parole for issuing “false distress signals” – he was apparently trying to fake his own death at sea in an attempt to escape his sex offender status.)

Two months later, Gilbert was hired by Comfort Keepers as a non-medical caregiver, a “sitter”, in an Alzheimer’s care unit on October 23, 2005. Comfort Keepers ran a “national” criminal background check from CBCInnovis that failed to disclose his criminal history or his sex offender registration.

On November 7, 2005, two weeks after Gilbert was hired, a 77-year-old resident identified him as the man who raped her.  He faced no criminal charges in this case, apparently due to the Alzheimer patient’s unreliability as a witness.

The family did sue Comfort Keepers and the Alzheimer’s care facility, and CBCInnovis. The civil case resulting from these allegations was settled April 8, 2009 – terms not disclosed.

The following is an excerpt from the plaintiff’s petition in this case:

It is hard to explain how so many people and businesses, who are charged with the responsibility of protecting and safeguarding our elderly, could all fail to do their jobs in such a negligent and grossly negligent manner that a known sexual predator such as Michael Henderson a/k/a Michael Anthony Gilbert could be allowed to molest and abuse a poor, defenseless 77 year old grandmother like Colleen Stagner, but that is what happened in this case. Not only were Defendants being paid to care for and protect innocent, foreseeable victims like Colleen from being sexually assaulted, they actually interviewed, hired, and placed a registered sex offender in a position to enable him to carry out these outrageous acts of physical and sexual abuse.

According to court documents, which include a copy of Gilbert’s employment application, Gilbert responded to the criminal history question on the application with “will discuss in interview.”

I always advise employers to respond “No, we won’t” and move on to the next applicant when an applicant fails to fully respond to questions on the employment application. In this case, however, Comfort Keepers interviewed Gilbert and made the following notation on the application: “Michael discussed that this was something minor that happened over 12 years ago – not on criminal record.”

Obviously Gilbert lied and the “national” criminal background check failed to catch the lie.

The fact is that there is no such thing as a “national” or “nationwide” criminal records database that has any level of reliability. The only way to obtain a criminal history on an individual that approaches reliable is to search the county, state, and federal records in each jurisdiction where the person has lived, worked, or attended school. The “national” database (Imperative Information Group prefers to call it a multi-jurisdictional criminal records database) should be used only as a source of possible records – not relied upon as the primary source of records.

UPDATE:

In April 2011, authorities say Gilbert attempted to avoid arrest in another sexual assault by again faking his own death. He is accused of fatally shooting a homeless man, putting the body in his car’s trunk and setting the car ablaze, hoping police would think that the body was his. He is currently being prosecuted. Hopefully, he won’t see daylight for a long, long time.