Twelve years ago, a disgruntled Coca-Cola employee tried to sell top-secret Coke documents to Pepsi.
In a hot summer afternoon in 2006, Ibrahim Dimson walked swiftly through Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport clutching a yellow Girl Scout cookie box stuffed with $30k in rolled-up $50 and $100 bills.
Minutes earlier, he’d handed off an Armani Exchange duffle bag containing dozens of stolen Coca-Cola documents and a vial of a secret formula — all marked “highly confidential” — to “Jerry,” a man who claimed to be a Pepsi executive.
Everything was going according to plan. Dimson and his inside source at Coke had hundreds of trade secrets they planned to sell to Pepsi, and this was just the beginning.
But there was a just one problem: Jerry wasn’t who he claimed to be — and unbeknownst to Dimson and his accomplices, the shit was about to hit the fan.
In late 2005, Williams was introduced to a friend of a friend named Edmund Duhaney. A 40-year-old father of three, Duhaney had just gotten out of prison on cocaine charges and was looking for work.
Williams told him she possessed a trove of “highly classified” Coca-Cola documents that would likely be worth money to the company’s major competitor, Pepsi — but she’d signed a non-disclosure agreement and couldn’t deliver the goods herself.
She needed a middle-man, and Duhaney knew just the guy: his buddy Ibrahim Dimson, a young white-collar embezzler and self-proclaimed “charmer” he’d met in prison.
Under the alias “Dirk,” Dimson sent a letter (in an official Coca-Cola envelope) addressed to a Senior VP at Pepsi, claiming he was a high-level Coca-Cola executive with “extremely confidential” trade secrets.
Two weeks later, much to the delight of Joya Williams, Dimson received a call from a supposed PepsiCo employee by the name of “Jerry.” He was interested and asked Dimson for proof he could deliver.
Dimson faxed Jerry 14 pages of Coca-Cola documents — almost all marked “confidential information” or “classified-highly restricted” — and told Jerry that he needed to wire money to a provided bank account to show he was a “serious partner.”
Shortly thereafter, he received a transfer for $5k. And then, the real heist began.
In mid-June both Dimson and Jerry met at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Dimson handed over an Armani Exchange duff bag which had the documents and I return received a Girl Scout cookie box with cash in it.
Now the twist in the story, Jerry was FBI Special Agent Gerald Reichard. Months earlier, when PepsiCo received the trio’s initial letter, without giving it a second thought, they had promptly informed about it to Coca-Cola. To look into this case, Coca-Cola brought FBI for an undercover investigation.
Williams, Dimson, and Duhaney were arrested on charges of wire fraud and unlawfully stealing and selling trade secrets. Duhaney returned back to the place where he started. Williams after a lot of reluctance was found guilty.
An illustration of Duhaney (left), Williams (center), and Dimson (right) in court
In a swift trial, Duhaney and Dimson were handed 2- and 5-year prison sentences, respectively. “This should have died where it started,” Duhaney bemoaned in court: “a mere fantasy.”
Williams initially denied the allegations and maintained that her accomplices had “double-crossed” her — but facing an insurmountable heap of evidence, she ended up spending 8 years in the can. “[It’s] like something from a spy novel,” Williams’ lawyer told reporters.
In today’s era of cut-throat competition, all of us wish to reach to the magnanimous marketing strategy of top companies, that can change our fortune overnight. We all know about PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, they deserve no introduction.
Ever thought, what if PepsiCo uncovers the secret formula of Coca-Cola? Obviously, PepsiCo can become the biggest beverage brand in the world surpassing Coca-Cola or they can just leak the formula in the market.
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