07 Sep 2016

NorQuest College woes of alleged harassment in IT data theft

NorQuest College is in Edmonton, Alberta and Clarence Orleski was the manager of technology infrastructure until being terminated on December 4, 2012 by executives Shawn Terlson and John Smith.  Apparently, Orleski did not get along with Smith and on a September 20, 2012 morning of a planned meeting Smith received an email from Orleski stating:

"I've been wanting to touch base with you and get the name (and contact info) of the lady you introduced to me back in the late fall last year…

I forget her name, but she is the one that you and her thought no one was in the office at the time. I was going to interrupt the two of you, but I felt I might be intruding on something, so I just hung around for a while. ðŸ™‚

…I think her name was (woman's name)"

Orleski then went to the meeting and exclaimed he couldn't stand the sight of Smith and requested to work from home until his planned retirement of March 2013.  The request was denied and Orleski was given a disciplinary warning.

The next day, September 21, Orleski allegedly ran DBAN on his NorQuest work laptop to wipe his hard disk.  A few days later, Orleski was reprimanded by Smith for a $10,000 phone bill on his work phone and iPad while on vacation in Europe.  Smith told Orleski that he was not expected to be available (i.e. not to expect the college to pay the bill.)  Orleski then went on sick leave for two months until his firing.

January 21, 2013, NorQuest college then terminated Terlson.  Terlson then received an email:

"I guess what I'm trying to figure out is which one are you? 'Dumb' or 'Dumber'… Don't worry, Mr. pretty boy (Smith) won't be far behind you…

On February 19, 2013, dozens of executives and staff at NorQuest college received an email full of PDFs which started with:

"What you're about to read is correspondence of a sexual nature between myself (John Smith) and my little playful sweetie"

On March 1st, 2013, a court order was issued and Orleski's personal computer, iPad, phone, and other storage were confiscated by that afternoon.  A $2 million claim of damages was made by the college but a settlement was made in 2015 and the lawsuit ended in January 2016.  In the end, a privacy breach was uncovered of unrelated materials stored on the 2.4 gigabytes of 45,920 files in a folder on Orleski's computer including financial data, employee personnel information, and an employment contract of the college president. 

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