News Alert: U.S. CEOs Make a Break For It
Band of Roving Chief Executives Spotted Miles from Mexican
Border
July 2, 2002 – San Antonio, Texas
Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs
of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican
border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire
rampage off as a marketing expense.
“They came into my home, made me pay for my own TV, then double-booked the
revenues,” said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just north of El Paso. “Right
in front of my daughters.”
Calling themselves the CEOnistas, the chief executives were first spotted last
night along the Rio Grande River near Quemado, where they bought each of the
town’s 320 residents by borrowing against pension fund gains. By late this morning,
the CEOnistas had arbitrarily inflated Quemado’s population to 960, and declared
a 200 percent profit for the fiscal second quarter.
This morning, the outlaws bought the city of Waco, transferred its underperforming
areas to a private partnership, and sent a bill to California for $4.5 billion.
Law enforcement officials and disgruntled shareholders riding posse were noticeably
frustrated.
“First of all, they’re very hard to find because they always stand behind their
numbers, and the numbers keep shifting,” said posse spokesman Dean Levitt. “And
every time we yell ‘Stop in the name of the shareholders!’, they refer us to
investor relations. I’ve been on the phone all damn morning.”
“YOU’LL NEVER AUDIT ME ALIVE!”
The pursuers said they have had some success, however, by preying on a common
executive weakness. “Last night we caught about 24 of them by disguising one
of our female officers as a CNBC anchor,” said U.S. Border Patrol spokesperson
Janet Lewis. “It was like moths to a flame.”
Also, teams of agents have been using high-powered listening devices to scan
the plains for telltale sounds of the CEOnistas. “Most of the time we just hear
leaves rustling or cattle flicking their tails,” said Lewis, “but occasionally
we’ll pick up someone saying, ‘I was totally out of the loop on that.'”
Among former and current CEOs apprehended with this method were Computer Associates’
Sanjay Kumar, Adelphia’s John Rigas, Enron’s Ken Lay, Joseph Nacchio of Qwest,
Joseph Berardino of Arthur Andersen, and every Global Crossing CEO since 1997.
ImClone Systems’ Sam Waksal and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco were not allowed to
join the CEOnistas as they have already been indicted.
So far, about 50 chief executives have been captured, including Martha Stewart,
who was detained south of El Paso where she had cut through a barbed-wire fence
at the Zaragosa border crossing off Highway 375. “She would have gotten away,
but she was stopping motorists to ask for marzipan and food coloring so she
could make edible snowman place settings, using the cut pieces of wire for the
arms,” said Border Patrol officer Jennette Cushing. “We put her in cell No.
7, because the morning sun really adds texture to the stucco walls.”
While some stragglers are believed to have successfully crossed into Mexico,
Cushing said the bulk of the CEOnistas have holed themselves up at the Alamo.
“No, not the fort, the car rental place at the airport,” she said. “They’re
rotating all the tires on the minivans and accounting for each change as a sale.”