Leaks: How Geek Squad Investigated Its Own Porn Thieves

By consumerist.com on November 30, 2007 7:57 PM 130354 views

Best Buy launched a nation-wide internal investigation after we published a video sting op capturing one of their techs stealing porn from our computer. A fired Geek Squad supervisor tells how it all went down...Innocents fired... Liars kept jobs... Store hard drives seized... Pants shat...

The start of the internal Geek Squad investigation began this summer as all of the locations throughout the country were entered through remote connection and scanned for violations. The Geek Squad "precincts" that had bench machines containing serious violations had their hard drives removed and shipped to the corporate office. All of this was done rapidly and under the watchful eye of salary managers who had their jobs threatened if this was not executed properly. My store was lucky enough to have scored well enough on the remote scans to keep our hard drives. I knew at this point that there was serious cause for concern if Best Buy was willing to spend the kind of cash necessary to execute remote scans throughout ALL of its stores in one day.

A couple weeks later, the general manager of Best Buy informed me that the remote scans were phase one of the investigation. Phase two was a physical check of policies and procedures done by corporate geniuses. Phase three was called an "interview" and I will come back to that term in a moment. My general manager volunteered our store to go as soon as possible in the "interview" phase because we had nothing to hide, which we didn't. For those who are not aware, Geek Squad has received negative media attention for the way they handle customer data, and these events are what I believed triggered this internal investigation.
The "interview" phase was not an interview. The correct word starts with the same letter; it was an interrogation and nothing short of it. There are a couple different corporate interrogators going to stores through the nation. Stores who received bad scores on the remote scans were flagged to be interrogated; the last number I heard was over 300 stores would be interrogated. Many of these interrogations have not yet occurred to date. My interrogator was named Wayne. I was pulled into the Lost Prevention office, which is a small closet sized room normally used for security and interrogating thieves. I immediately voiced my concern for the way my employees had been interrogated before me, and that I did not believe this was ethical practice for our business. Wayne assured me that this event was necessary to repair and clean up the image of Geek Squad. He stated that this "interview" was not to get everyone fired but to gather information critical to correct procedures on the way we handle customer data (entrapment). As Wayne and I talked he informed me he had been interrogating people for years and he would know if I was lying. He stated, "If you begin to lie to me, the mood in this room is going to change very fast". Wayne made a few other subtle threats throughout our chat. He stated that our store was red flagged before my arrival as supervisor, and this interrogation was going to take place regardless of the results of our remote scans. Wayne called me a liar in our interview and tried to trip me up on my own words. After Wayne left the room, the witness informed me that he also does these interrogations and that his are nothing more than a casual conversation. I had one employee out of town during the interrogations, so when they came back for him, his interrogation was a little different. It was different because I called HR and voiced my serious concern. His interrogation was an interview, it was done in a large meeting room, and where mine lasted almost two hours his lasted thirty minutes. Oh by the way, he kept his job, I didn't. He admitted to me later that he kept his job because he lied and that he felt bad.

There were three Geek Squad members fired from my store including myself. The first two were fired for burning a non-copyrighted CD for another employee on a non company issued blank CD-R. I admitted in my interrogation that I was aware of this, and that I stopped these events after that occurrence. I was fired for being aware of this non copyrighted CD being copied. To quote, I did not provide the proper example of leadership. Keep in my mind I removed over 100 illegal tools and pirated discs upon my arrival as supervisor, as well as some remnants of an internal porn scandal. I had one Geek Squad employee that had a copy of customer related financial material on his flash drive that was confiscated during the investigation, by the way he kept his job. To back track this investigation was intended to address the way we handle customer data, and the one major infraction went unpunished. Supposedly, these results from the interrogation are plotted on a matrix by the corporate office and assigned the appropriate punishment. If I was fired for knowing about a non-copyright CD being burned, then remaining employees should start looking for a new job. The punishments are just beginning to be handed out throughout the country. One neighboring store lost nine Geek squad employees and two salary managers. To top all of this off, other Best Buy employees knew about my termination before I did. Apparently, my General Manager is not intelligent enough to know how to fire three people with the entire store finding out first.

The three Geek Squad employees were by the book ethical employees. The employees remaining employed remained because they lied. Best Buy believes that by launching this investigation they will repair their image. They have betrayed theirs customers for years, and now they are starting to betray their employees. They are terminating young men because they (Best Buy) lacked the ability to clearly define and structure policies in the beginning.

Regards,

The Betrayed

(Photo: Victor Chiu)

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Leaks: How Geek Squad Investigated Its Own Porn Thieves

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