Mission AccomplishedMission Accomplished

It's not often a VP of an IT services company gets to go undercover, but Andy Parsons of Vector Networks Inc. recently got to play real-life Starsky and Hutch.

It all goes back to an E-mail Parsons received from a disgruntled employee at one of Vector's competitors, offering his employer's complete customer database for the bargain price of $20,000.

Not one to tolerate corporate espionage--even to his own company's benefit--Parsons immediately put a call in to the CEO of the competing company, which already had experienced employee backlash regarding stolen data and was trying to put together a criminal case in Florida. Not long after, the FBI contacted Parsons with the request that he go undercover--wiretap and all. His mission: to collect all the essential evidence from the perp on the phone, then set up a meeting in a Georgia hotel, conduct the transaction, and ultimately bring the bad guy to justice.

So just as Parsons, the perp, and his accomplice exchanged the data and the money, the feds burst into the room and the bad guys were arrested. In retrospect, Parsons says he was concerned for his safety only after the fact, when he thought about what could have gone wrong. But during the sting, the FBI made it easy for him to participate. "They the FBI have a habit of making you feel safe and secure," Parsons says. "You come out after thinking, 'My God, he could have had a gun.' "