08:17, 20/04/2022 What happened when a Coca-Cola employee tried to sell its secret formula

TRENDING ORIGINALS
Home › The botched Coca-Cola heist of 2006

1 How Ikea tricks you into buying more stuff

The botched Coca-Cola heist of 2006 2 Why most gas stations don’t make money from selling gas
Twelve years ago, a disgruntled Coca-Cola employee tried to sell top-secret
Coke documents to Pepsi. The rest reads like something out of a bad spy novel.
3 Meet the woman who builds the world’s most unique
Airbnbs

4 The popular electronics chain that scammed America

5 Why thinking about inflation leads to more inflation

Never Miss What’s Happening In Business

and Tech

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

Your email address

Zachary Crockett April 28, 2018

Join Free

O
Trusted By 2M+ Readers
n a hot summer afternoon in 2006, Ibrahim Dimson walked swiftly through Atlanta’s
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport clutching a yellow Girl Scout cookie box stuffed
with $30k in rolled-up $50 and $100 bills.

Minutes earlier, he’d handed off an Armani Exchange duffle bag containing dozens of stolen
Coca-Cola documents and a vial of a secret formula — all marked “highly confidential” — to
“Jerry,” a man who claimed to be a Pepsi executive.

Everything was going according to plan. Dimson and his inside source at Coke had
hundreds of trade secrets they planned to sell to Pepsi, and this was just the beginning.

But there was a just one problem: Jerry wasn’t who he claimed to be — and unbeknownst to
Dimson and his accomplices, the shit was about to hit the fan.

Woman on the inside

At Coca-Cola, secrecy is the lifeblood of corporate culture.

Workers are routinely subjected to security checks. Surveillance cameras dot every corner
of the building. Their crown jewel, the original Coke formula, is supposedly locked in a multi-
million dollar vault; only two people on Earth know it, and they fly on separate planes when
traveling in case of an accident.

Vetted business ideas you can launch

in a weekend
Get 1,000+ Ideas 💰

“Entertaining, informative, keeps you coming back for

more...”

We use cookies to make the Coca-Cola

Former Hustle website a better
CEO, Muhtar Kent, place. Cookies
stands in front of ahelp to provide
multi-million a vault
dollar more personalized
that experience
supposedly hold the and relevant advertising for you, and web analytics for us. To learn more about the
different cookies we'resecret
using,Coke recipe
check (viaour
out Coca-Cola
Cookiearchives)
Settings. For further information, check out our Cookie Policy & our Privacy Policy.
Decline
In this hyper-secretive culture, Joya Williams was the model employee. Allow Cookies

https://thehustle.co/coca-cola-stolen-recipe/ 1/4
08:17, 20/04/2022 What happened when a Coca-Cola employee tried to sell its secret formula

The daughter of a church deacon and a Sunday school superintendent, she’d worked for 3.5
years at Coca-Cola’s largest bottling factory before joining corporate in 2005. As the
administrative assistant to the Global Head of Marketing, she was entrusted with sensitive
emails, internal documents, and yet-to-be-released products, according to a 2007 article in
Atlanta magazine.

But 14 months into her $50k-per-year job, she began to feel she wasn’t being treated right —
and she formulated a plan to stab them in the back.

Hatching the plan

In late 2005, Williams was introduced to a friend of a friend named Edmund Duhaney. A 40-
year-old father of three, Duhaney had just gotten out of prison on cocaine charges and was
looking for work.

Williams told him she possessed a trove of “highly classified” Coca-Cola documents that
would likely be worth money to the company’s major competitor, Pepsi — but she’d signed a
non-disclosure agreement and couldn’t deliver the goods herself.
The podcast for awesome builders,
She needed a middle-man, and Duhaney knew just the guy: his buddy Ibrahim Dimson, a schemers, and dreamers.
young white-collar embezzler and self-proclaimed “charmer” he’d met in prison.
Listen on Listen on
Under the alias “Dirk,” Dimson sent a letter (in an official Coca-Cola envelope) addressed to Apple Podcast Castro
a Senior VP at Pepsi, claiming he was a high-level Coca-Cola executive with “extremely
Listen on
confidential” trade secrets.
Spotify

Recreation of a letter Dimson (as “Dirk”) sent to Pepsi (The Hustle, via DoJ transcripts)

Two weeks later, much to the delight of Joya Williams, Dimson received a call from a
supposed PepsiCo employee by the name of “Jerry.” He was interested and asked Dimson
for proof he could deliver.

Dimson faxed Jerry 14 pages of Coca-Cola documents — almost all marked “confidential
information” or “classified-highly restricted” — and told Jerry that he needed to wire money
to a provided bank account to show he was a “serious partner.”

Shortly thereafter, he received a transfer for $5k. And then, the real heist began.

Big money
As a trusted middle-woman between top-level execs, Joya Williams procured not just troves
of documents (presentations, internal emails, development proposals), but actual samples
of unreleased products.

Late one night at the Coca-Cola Headquarters — a towering, modern monstrosity in

midtown Atlanta — Williams stuffed her bag with manila folders of classified paperwork and
a small vial of a “secret” product under development.

Once procured, these artifacts were passed on to Dimson, who promptly convinced Jerry to
purchase them for $75k — $30k upfront and $45k later after tests.

We use cookies to make the Hustle website a better place. Cookies help to provide a more personalized experience and relevant advertising for you, and web analytics for us. To learn more about the
different cookies we're using, check out our Cookie Settings. For further information, check out our Cookie Policy & our Privacy Policy.
Decline Allow Cookies

https://thehustle.co/coca-cola-stolen-recipe/ 2/4
08:17, 20/04/2022 What happened when a Coca-Cola employee tried to sell its secret formula

The Coca-Cola HQ in Atlanta

In mid-June, the two met at Hartsfield-Jackson International airport in Atlanta, where, in

broad daylight, Dimson handed over a brown Armani Exchange duffle bag full of the goods
in exchange for a Girl Scout cookie box stuffed with cash.

Dimson left the airport, got into a car with his pal, Duhaney, and booked it to Decatur,
Georgia, where they divvied up the dough: $2k for Duhaney, $6k for Williams, and the lion’s
share, $22k, for Dimson himself.

But the real payday came 10 days later, when Jerry rang Dimson and offered $1.5m for the
remaining trade secrets.

The trio had struck gold. Or so it seemed…

Will the real Jerry please stand up?

See, Jerry wasn’t actually a Pepsi exec: he was FBI Special Agent Gerald Reichard (AKA
Gerry).

Months earlier, when Pepsi received the trio’s initial letter, they’d promptly forwarded it to
Coca-Cola, and informed them they had a leaker. In turn, Coca-Cola had brought in the FBI to
conduct an undercover investigation.

On July 5, 2006, Williams, Dimson, and Duhaney were arrested on charges of wire fraud and
unlawfully stealing and selling trade secrets.

An illustration of Duhaney (left), Williams (center), and Dimson (right) in court

In a swift trial, Duhaney and Dimson were handed 2- and 5-year prison sentences,
respectively. “This should have died where it started,” Duhaney bemoaned in court: “a mere
fantasy.”

Williams initially denied the allegations and maintained that her accomplices had “double-
crossed” her — but facing an insurmountable heap of evidence, she ended up spending 8
years in the can. “[It’s] like something from a spy novel,” Williams’ lawyer told reporters.

All’s fair in cola and war

“We did what any responsible company would do,” a PepsiCo spokesman would later say.
“Competition can be fierce, but it must also be fair and legal.”

It’s certainly been “fierce:” Since launching 7 years apart in the late 19th century, Coca-Cola
and PepsiCo have been locked in a decades-long battle for market share.

They’ve taken out full-page newspaper ads against each other, organized large-scale blind
taste tests, and staged marketing duels so fierce that the media dubbed them the “Cola
Wars.” During corporate “rallies” in the ‘80s, Coca-Cola’s ex-CEO would don military fatigues
and defiantly smash a bottle of Pepsi on the ground.

But 12 years ago, the company didn’t think twice about turning down trade secrets —  and
We use cookies to make the Hustle website a better place. Cookies help to provide a more personalized experience and relevant advertising for you, and web analytics for us. To learn more about the
today’s firms might learn something from that.
different cookies we're using, check out our Cookie Settings. For further information, check out our Cookie Policy & our Privacy Policy.
Decline Allow Cookies

https://thehustle.co/coca-cola-stolen-recipe/ 3/4
08:17, 20/04/2022 What happened when a Coca-Cola employee tried to sell its secret formula

In recent times, a number of high-profile rivals have been accused of trade secret theft:
 Uber allegedly pilfered Waymo; Samsung stole info from fellow chip-maker, TSMC;
Facebook was ordered to pay $500m to a VR company in the face of intellectual property
theft charges, and now they’re back in court again.

At some point, America’s corporations must face the ultimate question of their time: are
they a Dirk or a Jerry?

Get the 5-minute roundup you’ll actually read in

your inbox​
Business and tech news in 5 minutes or less​

Your email address JOIN FREE

100% free. We don’t spam. Unsubscribe whenever.

Digits: Spotify in years,

kosher food, and goo-goo The first ‘Easter eggs’ were an
gaga act of corporate rebellion
Why is AriZona iced tea By Jacob Cohen
 / April 18, 2022 By Mark Dent
 / April 15, 2022
increasingly cheap?
By Jacob Cohen
 / April 18, 2022 READ MORE READ MORE

READ MORE

Daily Headlines Hustle Originals Today’s Newsletter Podcast Trends HubSpot

© 2022, Hustle Con Media, Inc., All Rights Reserved.

Privacy Policy

We use cookies to make the Hustle website a better place. Cookies help to provide a more personalized experience and relevant advertising for you, and web analytics for us. To learn more about the
different cookies we're using, check out our Cookie Settings. For further information, check out our Cookie Policy & our Privacy Policy.
Decline Allow Cookies

https://thehustle.co/coca-cola-stolen-recipe/ 4/4