U.S. Attorneys have charged the owners of a New York Bentley and Aston Martin dealership with corporate espionage after discovering they had tapped into the email network of a rival Ferrari and Maserati dealership.
According to Bloomberg, Giacomo Ciaccia and Leka Vuksanaj, the co-owners of Universal Autosports LLC,were former employees of the Ferrari dealership. A third man, Michael Lussos, listed as the Creative Director of Universal Autosports, helped to set up the email system for the Ferrari dealership.
Investigators discovered that the Ferrari dealership's email were being forwarded to an outside account. In some instances, Universal Auto sport attempted to use the information to thwart potential sales by contacting customers directly. The three men each face up to five years in jail and a fine of $250,000.
Bloomberg: Aston Martin Dealer Is Charged With Spying on Rival
estreka says:
03:04 PM, 04/22/09
I nearly choked on my water laughing at this. Good detective work, guys!
redliner says:
09:01 PM, 04/22/09
It happens more than you think, and only 1 out of every 1000 get caught.
CaptainChaos says:
06:22 AM, 04/23/09
I cannot figure this out based on the Bloomberg article, but it does appear that the victim dealership was responsible for its own network amenities. Does this strike anyone else as a Really Bad Idea? The clientèle at dealerships like these have incomes worth several times that of the average mortal, and as such their identities (both merely as a contact, such as in this case, or in cases of identity theft) are very valuable and should be closely guarded. So why is it that a random Ferrari dealership can run an apparently rinky-dink network like this?
It may be the case that all Ferrari dealership's network particulars are managed by Ferrari itself and that they just don't have their act together.
brn says:
10:44 AM, 04/23/09
Captain, you'd be amazed as to how poorly many dealership's networks are run.
Some are technically savvy or belong to a corporation that is technically savvy. Some trust their systems to responsible DMS providers (Reynods, ADP, etc). Then there are the others....
Individual dealers that don't understand what's involved. Every vendor for every produce comes in and redefines their network for them. They have little concern for existing applications and willingly destroy them so theirs will work. It's appalling.
Also, the last thing you want is for the manufacturer to run the systems. Infiniti currently does that (Nissan doesn't). It's decades behind everyone else and only proves that manufactures need to stick to making cars.