There was a time when computer drives weighed much as bricks. Q.T. Wiles, the CEO of a struggling Colorado manufacturer called MiniScribe, thought his auditors wouldn’t know the difference.
Wiles was renowned as “Dr. Fix-It,” a corporate turnaround specialist for San Francisco-based venture cap giant Hambrecht & Quist.
He went to prison after the people he oversaw loaded 26,000 bricks into boxes. MiniScribe recorded these boxed bricks as inventory and even revenues to make up for a shortfall on in its quarterly financial goals.
Wiles demanded that his employees make their numbers or leave. He dressed them down, and even fired them, in meetings. These antics led to managers fudging numbers.
Eventually, the hole they dug got too deep. Wiles then approved a scheme to fool Miniscribe’s independent auditors with bricks.
This was as dumb as the proverbial box of rocks.
It was astonishing how many mangers and employees went along with the scheme, and it’s audacity opens the question of what Wiles might have gotten away with during his long career as a corporate turnaround specialist. Typically, crooks get caught when they habitually break laws. Are we to believe this was his first rodeo?
After the company filed bankruptcy, Maxtor bought its pieces. Wiles was convicted in 1994, served about two and a half years in prison, and lived to be nearly a century old.
Here’s what his brick looks like today:
