When a sketchy company comes in contact with someone who knows what they’re doing, crazy things can happen.

This person worked for a corrupt company as an IT manager, and after some serious drama, found a way to not only get some revenge, but change the company forever!

Let’s dive in and get the full story…

Null encryption creates null company

This happened in 2001. I worked as an IT Manager for Z-corp, a multi-level marketing company providing internet education and website hosting services.

Mostly we made money by selling you a $149 yearly program that automatically renews.

The vast majority of the $149 was used to pay the people above you in your up-line. We also taught you how to sign up people in your down line so you could make money.

The important part is the annual renewal which would have made millionaires out of a large number of people.

Typical pyramid scheme, it seems…

At any rate, Z-corp was run by a father, Daddy, and his sons who were all former construction workers and lived a couple time zones later than me.

They woke up and started the day by yelling at the person most likely to need a jumpstart.

I typically worked 18 hour days so sleep was precious. 5am phone calls with someone yelling at me were common.

One fine morning at 5am, Daddy calls to tell me the website is down.

I stumble out of bed and drive to the data center, logon and see the last person to modify the production files was his son, Richard.

I call Daddy back and tell him his kid took down the site, then revert all the changes and delete Richard’s access.

Walking out of the data center, Daddy calls back that we can’t process credit cards. I walk back in and check our connection to the credit card processor, yep, its down.

This is where the issues kick in…

So I call their customer support line, who tells me Richard called them several hours ago and violated the contract.

Richard knows he screwed up bad so has turned off all his phones and moved into a hotel thinking no one would find him.

A mad scramble to find a new processor happens and we change over to using the new company.

We were down for 2 days. No sales. No money. No payouts.

Daddy calls our original processor and gets them to reinstate us as long as we sign a new contract.

The new contract requires SSL to enabled on the credit card pages (the little “lock” you see on every page) and credit card information is to be encrypted in the database.

We have a team meeting to discuss implementation details. Our development team says it will take a full rewrite and months to change the software to encrypt the credit card information.

I say we can implement a Null Encryption process in the database that doesn’t require a software rewrite.

Daddy is fully onboard with a quick solution and says do it. Doesn’t ask for details.

Uh oh…

I setup the database job and run the first update manually verifying everything works correctly. And go back to fixing all the other stuff that broke.

Daddy calls back to say the original credit card processor wants to audit our fixes before enabling our account again.

I invite them to the data center to personally check the server. They ask about our innovative encryption solution.

I say its easier to show than describe. I run the tests showing no credit card data is present. They ask to see the database code.

where credit card data present, set to NULL.

It runs every night at midnight.

Technically, I had Null encrypted the data. That it was no longer accessible wasn’t relevant. The audit passed and we were back in business.

Jan 3rd 2002, I had finally had enough of Z-corp.

No raises, no overtime, no comp time, paychecks always late, no bonus, no sleep, etc.

I reset my company phone and low level formatted my computer and quit. 6 days later, the first annual renewal failed because credit card data was Null.

Z-corp closed their doors permanently not long after.

Reddit opinions were mixed…

This person thinks it was a great plan.

While this person warned it could have been much worse.

Others thought it was inappropriate.

And this person just had a good time enjoying the story!

Some companies fly a little too close to the sun, in my opinion.

They get what they deserve!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.