Firing the company geek (Score 1)

Fortunately, I've only run into this once in my career. A rather small company with an IT department of 1. After I was dumped during a "right sizing" -- went for lunch and was met at the door when I returned by a rent-a-cop who refused to let me in the building but was willing to have a fellow worker supervised while she cleaned out my desk -- the company ran into problems with damn near everything computer related. The kicker was the same HR twit who dumped me calling me at my new job and giving me the chance to repair the "sabotage" I had done or he was calling the police. A couple of hours after I suggested what he could do with his offer and gone home, there came a knock on my apartment door and there were the police. The twit had gone ahead and filed charges over my "sabotage" before leaving the company. After a couple of weeks and getting lawyers involved, charges were dropped. The prosecutor agreed with my lawyer that the fact that most of the documentation for the corporate network existed in two places -- my head and on my corporate desktop which had been wiped by the paper MCSE who was hired to replace me did not constitute deliberate sabotage and I was not responsible for his general incompetence. My belief that I was under no obligation to do anything about the situation after being fired whether for free or as a paid consultant was not a criminal act. And, yes, they ended up paying quite well for this little episode to be settled out of court.