Caroll Lee Campbell was
the circulation manager for the Lawrenceville, Georgia, Gwinnett Daily
Post. The Rockdale Citizen
of Conyers, Georgia, was a sister paper of the Gwinnett Daily Post.
Paul Soucy was the Citizen’s district circulation manager.
In
September, 1997, the much larger Atlanta Journal & Constitution was
involved in litigation with its rival, the Gwinnett Daily Post, over
the right to publish Gwinnett County legal notices, and a related issue
regarding a dispute over paid newspaper subscriptions and a contract between
the Daily Post and a local cable TV operator.
Looking to make a fast buck,
Campbell contacted lawyers and business representatives for the Atlanta
Journal & Constitution and offered to sell proprietary financial and
business information from the Daily Post for $150,000. Using the code
name “Athena,” he directed the recipients of his offer to place an ad in
the “personals” section of the Atlanta paper if they were interested in
doing business.
The FBI was brought in and
placed a “Message to Athena” ad in the paper and began negotiations.
Several back and forth messages letter, Campbell finally sent a message
saying, “Show me the money.” The FBI arranged to meet “Athena” at a
local shopping mall where the Feds were to pay an initial $5,000 and some of
the information. Campbell would
get the rest of the money after he turned over the remainder of the
information.
After getting the $5,000, his
wife, Susan, gave $1,500 of that money to Soucy, who had been acting as a
lookout. Campbell also tried to buy a circulation list from another employee
for $300.
It didn’t take long for the
FBI to wrap this one up. Campbell pled guilty to conspiring to steal trade
secrets and was sentenced to three months in prison, three years of supervised
release, and was also ordered to pay $2,800 in restitution. Soucy, also pled
guilty, and was sentenced to three years probation, a $1,000 fine and $500 in
restitution payment. The charges against Susan Campbell were dropped after her
husband pled guilty and was sentenced. [i]
[i] Department of Justice
sources and website; Carr, Chris; Morton, Jack; Furniss, Jerry, The
Economic Espionage Act: Bear Trap or Mousetrap, The Texas Intellectual
Property Law Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter 2000, pp. 185-186.
© Copyright 2002 by Steven
Fink, All Rights Reserved. The text of this publication, or any part
thereof, may not be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission from the publisher or author.
Excerpt from the
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