Crime or Grime

After starting my own business, I witnessed an incident of professional con artistry in state government IT industry which I subsequently reported to as many authorities as I could. This con job was simple and effective: promise a state agency ERP perfection and deliver zero point shit. The state auditor investigated and deemed the incident a case of grime, rather than crime. I reponded with a protest that it was indeed a crime, to no avail. The culprit of this crime deemed grime resigned, leaving the state agency IT project in shambles and $1M of taxpayer funds totally wasted, and moved on to pull the same con job on a city government in the same city the state agency was operating in. I warned that city about the culprit's nefarious activities with the state agency, to no avail. It cost that city at least $8M before the culprit scurried off to yet another city government job less than 65 miles away.

The culprit: a Stanford graduate. Subsequently, I laugh at anyone bragging about being one.

This con is still common in the IT industry, and has been for decades. I first encountered it in the early 1990s when a highly-regarded consulting outfit pulled it on the global corporation I was working for at that time. I moved on before the damage they wrought cost me my job. Seven years later, news of their criminal complicity in the Enron scandal hit the news outlets.