In May, students for the for-profit American College of Education were running into some problems. Their access to email accounts and course information was locked down by Google, who had disabled their accounts. The reason why? A fired IT worker for the American College of Education locked the school out of their Google cloud account. Then, after locking the college out, he refused to help them get back into the accounts and Google was no help since the worker, Triano Williams, was the sole administrator for the account.
For his part, Triano Williams maintains that he didn’t deliberately lock the college out of their accounts; the information was stored on the school laptop and college administrators wiped it out by mistake. The college says Triano Williams wiped the computer and installed a new operating system to ensure that the college couldn’t access it. Google, like most cloud computing services, wasn’t willing to help out since the administrator wasn’t the one contacting them. Cue the dueling lawsuits, theirs over the lock out and his over discrimination and unpaid consultancy fees!
“In order to amicably settle this dispute, Mr. Williams requires a clean letter of reference and payment of $200,000,” said a letter from Williams’ lawyer, Calvita J. Frederick. “The reality is the college created this problem over the course of the last several years as a result of certain business decisions followed by the termination of certain key employees.”
Tags: college, online college, for-profit college, american college of education, chicago, illinois, Triano Williams, Calvita J. Frederick, college held for ransom by fired employee, former IT employee holds college for ransom, lawsuits, law and order, unusual lawsuits, discrimination