True tales of tech execs gone wild

You know all those videos of underclothed college students getting down and dirty on the beaches in Florida and Mexico? They got nothing on technology executives. This week brings two stories of high-tech head honchos behaving very very badly.

Let’s start with Legos lover Thomas Langenbach, the Terror of Target.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Sounds like Cringely’s come up with a couple more candidates for the Internet Hall of Shame. Who are your picks? | For a humorous take on the tech industry’s shenanigans, subscribe to Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld’s Tech Watch blog. ]

Langenbach, a vice president at SAP’s Palo Alto labs, was arrested and charged with illegally obtaining thousands of boxes of Legos from Target stores earlier this week. Yes, I said Legos — the multicolored snap-together construction pieces.

Langenbach’s grand criminal scheme: He allegedly printed bogus bar codes and slapped them over the real UPCs while inside the store. For example, instead of paying $279 for a Lego version of the Millennium Falcon from “Star Wars,” Langenbach snuck his own label on the box and dropped just $49.

Granted, anyone who pays nearly $300 for a toy replica of Hans Solo’s ride needs to get his head examined. It appears the same goes for Langenbach, who is charged with scamming Target stores out of more than 2,100 Legos sets, then selling the kits on eBay for roughly $30,000.

Langenbach got caught on tape buying the mismarked Legos, and he was arrested with fake bar codes in his car and a house full of Lego bricks. His eBay handle? Tomsbrickyard. I think Blockhead would have been more appropriate.

Have I mentioned the man is a VP at a multi-billion-dollar multinational, easily pulling down a mid-six-figure salary, not including stock options? Or that he owns a $2 million home?

What he also owns: a whole lot of crazy, yet Langenbach’s story pales in the comparison to our second tale of execs gone wild.

John McAfee, founder of the antivirus software company that still bears his name, is on the lam in Belize after being accused by local authorities of running a meth lab. Gizmodo’s Matt Honan has the story, and it’s a doozy.

It seems that after selling off McAfee, the 66-year-old serial entrepreneur moved to Belize to start up a biopharm company to manufacture antibiotics. According to a May 2010 article in Fast Company, a series of civil lawsuits in which McAfee was the defendant may have also influenced his change of address.

Since cashing out of McAfee (the company) in 1994, McAfee (the human) has started up a variety of oddball businesses, including an instant messaging software vendor and a travel firm specializing in motorized hang glider tours. But a meth lab was not among them, he claims.

Still, on the morning of May 4, McAfee was startled out of the bed he was sharing with his 17-year-old girlfriend by men holding automatic weapons. As he told Honan by telephone:

I jumped out of bed, I’m naked, I ran out on the porch where I could see troops with automatic weapons and in their assault stance, the low walk, definitely aggressive hostile movement. I went inside, put some pants on, came back out, and was shoved up against the wall. And that began my day.

According to McAfee, the raid was payback for failure to fork over the required tribute to a local politician. His punishment: a night huddled on the cement floor of a Belize jail with five other inmates and an overturned milk carton that had recently been filled with human waste. (Sorry.) Now he’s in an undisclosed location, rationing the last remaining bits of juice on his smartphone battery to post messages online and chat with reporters.

Over the last couple of years McAfee’s reputation for honesty has taken a few hits (and, presumably, so has McAfee), and his entire story may be BS. Still, it’s a heckuvalot more interesting than Facebook’s bungled IPO or who won the Google-Oracle lawsuit.

You’re a 66-year-old maverick millionaire on the run, and you’ve just been rousted from bed with a girl one-quarter your age by armed gunmen. I bet a lot of people would settle for that. Me, I’d just settle for the movie rights.

Where would you go if you were on the lam? (And don’t say Legoland.) Post your final destinations below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “True tales of tech execs gone wild,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.