on 12/15/07 11:48 AM, wikien-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org at wikien-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:09:32 +0000 From: Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Former Wikimedia employee was a felon. To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: BAY103-W1447A14AD4C19BFE091A49E8600@phx.gbl Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Because I thought it would be redundant! That it would be a waste of an email! Look, I knew nothing about this Register article. Bored one afternoon, I just followed the same trail of deduction and investigation that one has to assume the Register followed - all the stuff is there online - and I thought "Oh, no wonder they (WMF) kept that quiet!" I realise now that, sadly, I was wrong.
Jimbo, don't look at me. Look at your staff/Board. Someone there must have known - the COO can't just vanish to jail and no one on the staff/Board knows anything - \
Forgive me if I have got the timeline wrong, but my reading of the relevant articles is that she was arrested in May for DUI and driving on a suspended license but was released the same day on bond. In July the Foundation terminated her employment, and in August she was arrested and extradited on a parole violation (leaving the country in June for a Foundation meeting). (She was detained by Customs and Immigration in June but does not seem to have been arrested at that time, otherwise officer Smagowicz would have been described as the arresting officer, not merely the officer who interviewed her.)
It certainly was sloppy of the Foundation to hire someone for the position of "COO" without the simplest of background checks, but the allegation that she vanished off to jail and no one noticed seems to be a misreading of the timeline.
Thatcher