Working at Carpathia
2011-2018
The Bust

Carpathia was a great place to work, it was a small group that worked closely together well.  The company was growing, adding people and had a real positive attitude.  We often around 3:30 or so on Friday afternoon would breaking out the beer, wine with cheese and crackers and have happy hour.  The company also had parties and company paid trips to the Nationals baseball team where we begin to drink on the busses on the way there, all during the game and on the way back.  

But then there was the time of the RAID!   I was sitting at my desk working on the computer and a man comes up in front of my cubicle wall and says stop what your doing and report to the conference room.  I look up at him, “Like what?  Who are you?” and he flips out some badge and repeats his, not request, but demand.  I say OK, lock my computer, and get up, the man turns away and I see “ATF” on the back of his blue jacket.  I look around and see others, some ATF, some FBI and others I had to assume were from some other law enforcement branch.  As the other employees get up and march to the conference room where everyone from the whole company, around forty or so of us, are packed into a conference room made for a dozen.  

No one knew what was going on, and officer comes in and tells us to remain here for now and someone would come to get some information from each of us which they did getting our names, job and a few other details.  Over the next hour or so, an office would come in and get someone and walking them out.  We then were told we each would be allowed to go once we were “cleared”.  When we were cleared, we could go with an escort to our desk and gather any personal belongings but not to touch our computers.  After getting our belongs we would be escorted out the building.  Over the course of several more hours it my name was called, escorted to my desk and then to the exit.  

Upon getting home the text messages were flying and what was going on came out.  As it turns out Carpathia hosted hundreds of servers for a company that provide a file hosting and download service that was being busted for copyright infringement and government had simultaneous raids and arrests of the company employees and servers all over the world as far away as New Zealand where their CEO was arrested.  Other than a few system and network engineers staying to shut down the network and computers used by the company being investigated, all other employees were sent home.  It was a day or two later when we were notified, we could return to work with everything returning to normal being told not to discuss the event.  Within a few weeks you would have not known any of it had happened although I was told there were piles and piles of servers from the upload company stashed away in some Carpathia datacenter being held for evidence.

Larry 1/22/2020