The Hack that made Richard F. Smith 90 Million Dollars

“We all know you are entitled to nothing in this life.”  

Richard F. Smith

Richard F. Smith aka “Rick” became CEO of Equifax in Sept. of 2005.  Equifax has been around for 115 years.  Richard Smith graduated from Purdue University which has been around for 143 years.  Richard was handed his diploma becoming a true “Boilermaker” in 1981.  “Once you are a Boilermaker, you are a Boilermaker for life.”  It’s hard to find out a lot of personal details about Dick outside his public business life of 34 years because amongst the super rich social elite like Dick “You only appear in the public’s view twice;  Once for your birth announcement in the papers, and then finally for your obituary.  That’s it all they need to know about you.”  Dick sticks to the concept.  We can certainly guess that a white guy working top jobs at GE probably lives pretty well, well above 90% of the general population, meaning well above 300 million US citizens.  Then after making a bunch of money for his buddy Jack Welch, the twenty year 700 million dollar CEO at GE, Dick took a job from another one-percenter at Equifax to make more money.  Dick got burned last week when his consumer data cow he kept fenced in his yard got milked by hackers.  A HUGE data security breach at Equifax caused a HUGE backlash. Dick decided to confront the situation directly by resigning and directly cashing in for 90 million dollars.  It sort of reminds me of a Whole Foods security breach we experienced here in LA around the time of the huge Equifax hack.  But instead of resigning with 90 million dollars, my friend Manny the burrito maker got fired from Whole Foods with nothing.  

   

Manuel Fernandez or “Manny” had been working in the prepared foods section of Whole foods for over fifteen years.  By the time he was let loose, he was making around nineteen bucks an hour with all the trimmings.  Manny was born in LA, third generation American with family roots attached to Pancho Villa.  Manny’s older brother enlisted at eighteen, so when Manny turned eighteen he went to sign up too.  “They wouldn’t let me in because my little toe.” Manny told me one day while making me a burrito at Whole Foods.  “One summer I pulled my older brother out of the way of our neighbors dune buggy.  My foot got crushed under the rear wheel.  I lost my little toe in the accident, but my brother could have been killed if I hadn't grabbed him.”  Manny went to LACC, Los Angeles Community College.  LACC does not have a “Boilermaker for life” slogan.   Manny was already married to his long time girl friend Sara by the time he proudly graduated with his degree from LACC.  Manny went from job to job never really getting too far ahead.  Manny’s buddy worked at Whole Foods, around 2000 he offered to bring Manny aboard.  Manny already had a couple kids to take care of.  Eyeing the security of the corporate working world Manny bought in the only way he could.  He accepted a menial job in the Prepared Foods department.  Manny never left prepared foods.  He was specifically at that same cold case for fifteen years.  Just like hackers came out of nowhere to whack Dick, Manny got whacked when a girl named LaKeysha started making sandwiches at Whole Foods.  

When Richard F. Smith wanted to go to Purdue, it was arranged.  Today Purdue costs about fourteen grand a semester.  I imagine back when Dick went there it wasn’t cheap either.  Manny Hernandez has never had that sort of access to those kinds of funds.  No one in Manny’s family ever has, ever.  When Dick graduated with a BS degree he already had his job picked out.  He got it.  If you ask Manny “Where do you work?" he would say “I work for Whole Foods."  If you ask Dick where he worked before heading to Equifax, Dick casually says “I used to work for Jack Welch,” with no mention of Jack being the 750 million dollar CEO of General Electric.  The whole fifteen years Manny worked at Whole Foods he never talked to the CEO once.  After Dick worked for Jack, still being a “Boilermaker for life,"  Dick was given the helm at Equifax.  Equifax is one of the largest sources of consumer and commercial data in the world.  Dick was known as an innovator, a change maker.  Dick could take something already working well, get in there himself and make it work well better.  Dick never lifted a finger to accomplish this either.  Manny lifts a large spoon filled with whatever food you ask him to put on it.  Day after day after day for fifteen years Manny worked the “Cold Case” of pre-made deli items. Manny has been dishing food for 28,800 hours, in 3,600 eight hour shifts, over fifteen years.   In one, one single eight hour shift, lifting food with a large spoon into a container, then lifting that container to the customer’s hand, Manny does more physical work than Dick has ever done, on any job in his entire working career.  Dick is now worth more than 90 million dollars.  Manny?  Nothing.


Dick started at Equifax in December of 2005 as Chairman of the Board and CEO.  In 2005, Manny, roughly the same age as Dick was making twelve bucks an hour.  Manny would have hard times in the working years in the Whole Foods prepared foods department.  Standing up on his feet behind the cold case shredded cartilage in his knees.  Manny also developed diabetes.  Manny could never afford to buy the type of food he dished to paying customers.  Even with his 20% employee discount the nutritious fare at Whole Foods was too expensive.  When Dick came on board at Equifax he was expected to, innovate, expand corporate interests, make more money.  “Everyone there was working in a hundred and five year old company.  They just expected to sit back, doing the same thing for the next hundred five years.  I needed to bring some new talent in for inspiration.”  When Dick went looking for “new” talent Manny never even heard about it.  Dick recruited "new" talent by talking to his old buddies about who was around doing what.  Dick would innovate his company, making him and all his working buddies Billions.  They work by selling data, your data,  my data,  Manny’s data.  Equifax is one of the largest sellers of consumer data in the world.  “We have fifty spending parameters mapped out from the information on your paycheck alone.  Imagine our deep mine.”  So Equifax does not actually build anything, lift anything, create anything, invent anything, do anything, except use your data.  They use your data you create.  You make them money.  LaKeysha makes sandwiches.  One day she was asked to work in the cold case with one of the store’s longest working employees named Manuel Hernandez.  She was told, you can call him “Manny”.

LaKeysha was in the same boat as Manny.  She was poor, her family had never been wealthy, ever.  She had kids, no money.  She was bottom tier Whole Foods help.  Manny was bottom tier too despite his fifteen years as a company man.  Around the same time as the Equifax data breach LaKeysha was asked to cover a shift for someone working with Manny.  She agreed.  The cold case has prepared food in it that just gets scooped, weighed, and tagged.  Now the back part of the cold case has a little burrito bar that Manny was taking care of since LaKeysha wasn’t used to doing the work in that section.  The little burrito bar by the back of the cold case is like a mini Chipotle, you point out what you want to the worker as they pile on the ingredients for you.  The worker then “seals” the burrito on a hot press.  Most workers seal once then wrap, not Manny.  He did it special for his people.  He would press each side of the burrito so the outside was crunchy on every side.  People loved Manny’s burritos, not LaKeysha.  While Manny was over there carefully toasting each side of the burrito, LaKeysha was stuck helping customers at the cold case.  Manny told me later “I guess she got mad.”   The customer line at the cold case got very long.  LaKeysha blamed the line on Manny’s all star burrito toasting technique taking too much time.  Manny had been making burritos like this since they first added the burrito bar onto the backside of the cold case.  Not one worker had ever complained.  LaKeysha did not like it when her supervisor Dan saw the line build up on her.  Manny said she yelled at him for “making her look bad in front of Dan.”  LaKeysha would get her revenge.    

I’ve known Manny for years.  He used to come into a Medical Marijuana dispensary I managed in 2006 not far from the Whole Foods.  One day when I stopped into Whole Foods to grab something pre-made I saw Manny at the cold case.  “I didn’t know you worked here!”  We got a good laugh at seeing each other in the daylight.  I moved on from the job but stayed near the neighborhood.  Manny stayed put too, thankful for his menial corporate job.  I saw him many, many times over his years of dutiful employment.   Dick used to see his employees all the time too.  He wanted to hear exactly what they were doing while the company was paying them for their time.   He achieved this daily task by having his secretary look at his schedule.  She would find openings in Dick’s schedule she made for him then call the person Dick wanted to see.  The employee then came over to Dick’s office to give their report.  Dick would sit down listening carefully to what was being said.  He made sure he clearly heard the words spoken directly at him. As Dick sat there more people would come in for him to hear.  After hearing them carefully, Dick would speak to other people, type, send emails.  At times Dick would walk over 175 feet to sit in an ionic air filtered space at a table to “guide” others toward his vision.  “Guiding” for Dick entails Dick pushing air through his larynx vibrating ear drums that carefully cling to money sounds.  Around four hours into listening, and sometimes speaking, Dick often has had to have his secretary call for a company car to take him to an expensive restaurant for lunch where he is forced to wait hungry for his prepared food while attempting to explain something to someone else using even more words. He may have to talk to four people all at the same table sitting there hungry.  When someone listens to Dick talk he almost always uses these words first to thoroughly explain his position:  “I graduated from Purdue in eighty-one, then worked with Jack over at GE for a while.”  Things always seem to go well for Dick after using those words. 

On 29 July, 2017 Richard F. Smith Equifax CEO had to employ the time tested big corporation “oh shit” strategy he learned from all those years at GE.  “Mr. Smith, sir, we have a breach, a massive security breach.  Hackers have stolen the information we keep on 143 million of our consumers who were told by Equifax that their information would be safe.”...........  “Oh shit.”  Dick did have an answer.  The Equifax CEO sealed the doors.  No one said a word.  Dick tried to clean up his security breach without panicking investor money.  Dick failed.  Six weeks later on 7 September, Dick chokes up.  Dick sends out a letter to consumers telling them basically “tough luck guise.”  Dick did not receive his own letter as Dick has never been thought of, nor thought of himself as a consumer.  On 26 September Richard F. Smith, CEO of 115 year old Equifax voluntarily retired amid the growing information theft scandal.  I don’t blame him.  Why bother?  Fortune magazine says Dick is cashing out for 90 million.  Manny?  He is not so fortunate.  Even with full retirement, full benefits, full stock options, Manny wouldn’t have even close to a hundred thousand, no less a million, no less 90 million.  When Manny got fired, he probably got close to nothing.  He pulled out everything from his accounts years ago so he could pay for the hospice care his wife needed, sick with cancer.  Richard F. Smith could buy the hospice,  employ four people for four lifetimes to take care of his wife.  Manny still owes them money.  

“We know over fifty parameters about your behavior just from the information contained in your paycheck.”  Richard F. Smith 

Equifax does not build buildings.  Equifax does not dig wells.  Equifax does not make meals.  Equifax collects your information.  A whole bunch of it.  As much as they can legally for free, and as much as they can buy from other companies gold mining your every digitally logged in statistic.  Every recorded transaction, every recorded number, every recorded online visit gives more money to Equifax.  They literally live off your existence.  Not live off your effort, your sweat, no, they live off of you living.  Imagine this, you meet Dick at the grocery store.  He asks you immediately, “Listen, I don’t know you, never met you, but I am wondering, can I see your paycheck?”  Seems a little forward.  Not only does Dick and his employees at Equifax look at your paycheck knowing exactly how much you earn, they have fifty parameters of probable behavior based on the information in your paycheck.  That is all they do. Gather information, bits of data, all generated by you.  They do not physically add anything to the world.  They do not produce anything.  They take your data that you generate, then re-present it to someone else for money.  Equifax, Richard F. Smith and all his buddies literally, outside of paper printed reports,  produce nothing.  They make nothing but money.  Lakeesha wasn’t making a lot of money at Whole Foods.  She had three baby daddy that basically paid her bills.  I learned all this from Manny the last time I ever saw him.  I found out later that both he and Lakeesha got fired.  You can guarantee when Richard F. Smith finished shitting his drawers over the hacking news, cleaned himself up, gained his composure enough to make a phone call or two, he would be sure over the next coming weeks that teams of tough techies would blanket the blow, confusing information, events, timelines, leading criminal investigators away from ever pinning the tail on Dick.  The evidence of Mr. Richard F. Smith’s wrongdoing in the security breach will become nil.  Manny told me the evidence against him was on video.



The last time I saw Manny was about a week ago.  I couldn’t help but think about Manny when I heard about Dick resigning over his “security breach”.  The two were very similar, except Manny got fired over his “security breach”.  I heard all about it when I went in to Whole Foods last week for a burrito.  Manny was working as usual.  I went up to get my burrito.  Before I can order Manny says “Hey Arthur, let me get your email.”  

“Email? You got my number.” 

“No, I know, I just don’t know if I am going to be able to keep my phone on.”  

I thought that was kind of odd.  “What? Why would you not be able to keep your phone on?”  

“Oh man, see that girl over there making sandwiches?”  

I turned to my left.  “Yeah, she’s all right”  

“No, she hates me.  She told Dan, I was stealing food.”  Manny said.   

“So what?  Even if you were eating some food, they can’t prove it.”  

“No, I didn’t grab it for me.”  

“So what then?”  I asked. 

“There is this guy, a homeless guy, he comes in once a week or so.  I give a him a cup of carne asada from the burrito bar to eat.  I write my name on it like I already bought it, so he gets it for free.  He comes in the one day that girl over there LaKeysha is back here working with me.  She saw me give the guy some food in a container with no label on it.  After that she starts watching me.  The homeless guy came in yesterday.  I gave him some food like I usually do.  Wasn’t even thinking about it. This time LaKeysha was watching.  When I turned around she was standing there at her station looking dead at me shaking her head up and down.  I saw her talking to Dan before he left.  When I was clocking in today,  Dan told me to come to his office when I am done.  He wants to talk to me about some kind of ‘security breach.’   I think they got it on camera.  Arthur, me giving that guy food?  To them? That’s stealing.”    

..............“Oh Shit.”

Richard F. Smith, according to Fortune magazine will make 90 million from his well timed Equifax departure.  Equifax will continue its long prosperous 115 year history into the next 500 years making Dicks rich, while Manny’s work for the next 500 years servicing Dicks.  Even though Dick is retired, doing less of nothing than he got paid to do on his “job” doing nothing, I am sure he will out earn 99% of people doing actual work out there in the world.  

Today I took a ride to Whole Foods.  Once inside the warm store I walk to the cold case.  Manny is not here, my stomach sinks.  A younger asian girl with dreads is working.  She smiles “What do you need?”  
“Where is Manny?” I ask the Whole Foods employee.    
“He is not here today.  How can I help you?”  
I said, “No, listen, Manny and I are friends.  I am worried about him.  How is he doing?”  
Her employee stature shrinks to human form.  She looks around, no one is near us, “You know Manny?  I hate to tell you this.  He got fired.”     

“Fired?  Fired for what?”  

“Stealing food from the burrito bar.  They caught him on camera doing it.”  

“On camera, huh.  Do you know a girl named LaKeysha?”
“Yeah, she got fired too.” 

“For what?” I asked. 

“My manager Maria loved Manny.  She thought LaKeysha had something to do with Manny getting fired.  She wrote LaKeysha up three days in a row until LaKeysha got suspended, then Maria had her fired.”  

I get sad thinking about Manny.  However,  in my mind I know it is inevitable that employee status at any company can get you fired.  I order my food from the new Whole Foods cold case burrito bar employee, “When you make my burrito can you toast it on all four sides for me?”  I take the burrito to the cashier paying the exorbitant toll for exit.  I look up from my change to see this older white guy, in his early fifties, wearing brand new pressed khakis, 800 dollar shoes, five hundred dollar designer sunglasses, twenty five thousand dollar watch, platinum blonde wife in tow, both coming into Whole Foods. Right next to the older white guy, slightly to his right, a much, much younger version of himself walks.  He is around thirteen, skinny, pale.  The young kid took his mom’s light hair, her nose maybe, but he has his dad’s blue eyes in detail.  The young man is wearing a dark shirt with a strong yellow logo on the front that says “Purdue Boilermakers”.   I walk out, passing them by as they enter the store.  They now have their backs turned to me, their backs turned to the whole world, walking casually, willfully, safely, into their Manny manned food field.  Their pockets filled full of unlimited nutritious white buying power all to go at their convenience.  I turn lifting my burrito to Manny in tribute.  I laugh because all I can see is the bold yellow print on the kid’s back:  “Boilermaker for Life”.

Arthur C. Burnright