More than two years after the Deepwater Horizon rig collapsed in the Gulf of Mexico — killing 11 people — a former engineer for BP has become the first person arrested in the investigation surrounding the disaster.
The engineer stands accused of deleting hundreds of text messages with details on how much oil was flowing from the ruptured well into the Gulf of Mexico. He had been part of the team BP created to stop the leak and provide estimates on the volume of oil being released.
He had been under orders to not delete any information pertaining to his efforts, but authorities claim he deleted a total of 300 messages.
From the Wall Street Journal:
The deleted messages, some of which were recovered forensically, included sensitive information about the failure of one of the efforts to stop the flow of oil, known as the “top kill.” This includes a May 26, 2010, message from the first day of the top-kill efforts that said, “Too much flowrate–over 15,000,” indicating the flow from the well was three times higher than the company had said was the official rate of flow.
In 2011, Consumerist readers selected BP as the winner of our annual Worst Company In America tournament.
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So, the engineer gets cuffed because he deleted text messages, some indicating that the actual flow out of the Macondo well was 3x what the company was telling the public, but BP gets nothing for lying about it. Hooray for the justice system.
This is ok. They’ll put pressure on this guy to give up the goods on the higher-ups. They always bust someone down low first so they can make a deal and gain more information.
I am not so sure that is what they always do. I get the feeling this is going to play out along the lines of: They bust someone down low so the higher ups can continue sunning themselves on privately owned Canary Island beaches and not have to be bothered by such things as laws and courts.
This. They don’t *arrest* people when they want to grab the execs, they keep them in place as informants.
I agree, this is some Grade A Bullshit. I hope Mr. Mix doesn’t have to sign a non-disclosure as part of the “deal” he will probably get, because I would definitely buy that man’s book.
Seriously. You just know that he wasn’t doing this of his own accord. Someone higher up surely pressured him ‘off the record’ to deal with the problem in this way. Guys like this engineer are not the cause of the problem; they are a symptom of a far deeper sickness in the company’s management.
I would assume that in order for the government to go after BP they would have to be able to prove that BP knew that the oil flow into the waters was 3x what they admitted to. However if these deleted emails were the only proof of that fact that then it sounds like the government really wouldn’t have a case.
“He had been under orders to not delete any information pertaining to his efforts…”
I wonder if there was any winking and nudging while he was being told that.
The orders might have been like this: “Be sure there is NOTHING that management will need to delete in those messages”
I doubt it, as most people have seen enough CSI to know that almost everything can be recovered, except that term paper I did…
Correction, first scapegoat found. Nobody who actually made any decisions that created this outcome will serve a day in jail.
Sounds about right for our legal system; The side with the most expensive lawyers wins.
Naah.
The real winners are those who are connected to lawmakers. They never get charged to begin with.
Sucks to be that guy.
If he did not delete anything then he never would have been in trouble.
All he really had to do was take his phone fishing and dropped it in the lake “by accident” or just went to the police and filed a police report saying that he was mugged. He also could have gotten drunk and left it at a bar.
For an engineer he was not that smart.
They asked him only to not delete anything, not to use his phone. It is perfectly reasonable to lose or have your phone stolen when you use it normally so that cannot be held against you.
They probably recovered the messages from the cell company’s own data, not from the phone itself.
Not if it was T-Mobile:
‘Change In T-Mobile Plan Deletes Deceased Daughter’s Last Voicemail To Parents
No, they took it from the phone as the aritcle states.
The phone companies do not record your text messages as that requires a lot of storage space they dont want to pay for.
The federal government probably records your text messages as they have direct fiber links to the routers used by phone companies but that system is classified and cannot be used in cases that have nothing to do with national security.
Verizon stores text message content for fourteen days, if I recall correctly.
Or, you know, use the phone for talking and not send text messages (or email).
This is what you call a FALL GUY. The corrupt greedy BP execs stay in their rich bubble of fancy cars, million dollar homes and living in the lap of luxury, while some other guy takes the blame for everything.
A former low-level employee cleaned up some space on his personal iPhone years after the incident and gets arrested. Meanwhile, the BP executives directly responsible for circumventing each possible safety measure bask in the “culture of ethical failure, substance abuse and promiscuity” courtesy of the Minerals Management Service.
Uh what about the negligence that killed 11 guys and poisoned the Gulf? They arrested some guy for deleting text messages? Wha…?
I’m seriously about to give up on this country.
I bet if I went to mainstreet of where I live and spilled one barrel of oil on the road they would not take two years to arrest me.
“Kurt Mix, of Katy, Texas, is charged with two counts of obstructing justice for deleting from his iPhone hundreds of messages he had exchanged with a co-worker and a contractor, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday.”
Not sure why this guy would do this unless he’s really high up on the ladder and he was calling the shots. I’m going to file this one under, not the crime but the cover up.
I think there’s a misunderstanding of what a preservation notice is.
You don’t delete a *damn* thing even remotely related to the subject of the investigation. I’ve had to deal with several of them. It’s not some haphazard “don’t delete this” kind of thing. It’s a legal document that you’re required to sign that goes into explicit detail over what information you’re required to save and methods whereby you retain that information.
For those suggesting “dropping your phone” as an alternative to him deleting the messages clearly don’t understand what these notices entail. They’ll usually require texts and voicemails be copied off of your cell phone immediately and you’ll typically have to volunteer that stuff to those investigating if it’s not a company resource they have access to already.
This guy’s actions are akin to destroying evidence. So yeah, they’re going to arrest him.
Akin to? No, this is actually destroying evidence, and screwing it up. Fine engineer he is.
Dern, people were complaining about Zimmerman being arrested in a timely manner….