Five relationships, five mailboxes, eighteen months of corporate email repurposed for purposes the IT department did not anticipate. The dates span June 2000 to February 2002, from the peak of Enron’s market dominance through its bankruptcy and beyond.
“Sorry Sexy” and the Parking Lot
Mark Torres was a gas trader at Enron North America. Sarah Reyes was an analyst. They sat near each other on the trading floor. Between September 2001 and November 2002, they exchanged 163 emails. This is a lot of emails between two people who could have turned their chairs around.
On October 18, 2001, during trading hours, with the stock in freefall and the Dynegy merger negotiations underway, Reyes sent Torres a message. The emails came seven to nineteen minutes apart, the cadence of two people typing while pretending to watch their screens.
Torres replied seven minutes later. Yes to the dating question. No to the jealousy. The thread continued with banter about being “a little rough” – but never beating her, he clarified.
One week later, the conversation moved to logistics.
The stock had dropped from $33 in early October. It would be under a dollar within a month. The parking lot exchange took 55 minutes from start to finish. They were ten feet from each other the entire time.
Love Notes During the Collapse
David Wells was a Vice President in the Pipeline Management Group. Laura Webb was a colleague in the same division. Their romance played out from September through November 2001 – which is to say, from the quarter when Enron restated $586 million in earnings through the week it filed for bankruptcy. The emails read like a split-screen: one channel tracking the stock price, the other tracking weekend plans.
On September 28, Webb confirmed pastry logistics. Wells had signed an earlier message “Your Seetheart” – not a pet name but a typo he apparently never corrected.
Less than a month later, the stock had dropped to $18. Webb folded the number into a love note.
The next day, Wells sent a note at 11:23 AM. Webb replied at 1:17 PM with the kind of question that only makes sense between two people who eat lunch together most days.
On November 27, 2001, Wells wrote to his brother. The email began with a personal update and ended with a weather report from ground zero.
Enron filed for bankruptcy five days later. The stock, which Webb had warned him away from at $21, was trading at twenty-six cents. Wells confirmed the relationship and noted the CNN trucks in the same breath, the way you might mention the weather and the weekend in one sentence. They were both still employed, both still at the company, and both still in the pipeline division. Whatever happened to Enron, the pastries and the ice cream were apparently worth showing up for.
Cross-Company Poetry
Paul Novak worked scheduling and logistics at Enron North America. Nicole Hayes worked at a competing pipeline company. Their professional emails about demand charges and contract releases traveled the same route as their personal ones – from her company address into his Enron inbox. The relationship ran from at least April 2000 through February 2002, outlasting Novak’s employer by three months.
By June 2000, the relationship was an open secret on Novak’s floor. A colleague knew her name and her Saturday night plans.
Novak deflected: “Went home and went to bed buddy! So which of the lovely young ladies did you spend time with?”
On October 23, 2001, with Enron’s stock at $20 and falling, Novak proposed a future in which the market no longer mattered.
“Little Biscuit” was their dog. The subject line – “RE: The Future” – was doing a lot of work in October 2001.
Two months later, on the day after Christmas, with Enron already in bankruptcy, Novak and Hayes exchanged the kind of messages that only exist between two people who have been together long enough to develop a private language.
Hayes’s original message, which prompted the Patrick Swayze riff, read in its entirety: “I wuv you. nh”
Then, on February 1, 2002, Hayes sent a poem from her company email address to Novak’s Enron inbox – a competitor’s employee sending verse to a bankrupt company’s server.
Novak replied that he could see her coworkers’ touch all through it. Whether they helped or not, the poem traveled from a competitor’s workstation to an Enron server three weeks after the Department of Justice opened its criminal investigation. The infrastructure didn’t care about corporate rivalries, and apparently neither did Hayes.
Married at Enron
Brian Marsh worked in gas trading. Ellen Marsh worked in Enron Energy Services. They were married to each other. They sent love notes via corporate email because that was the medium available during work hours, the same way a previous generation might have left notes on the kitchen counter.
Ellen replied one minute later: “I did get your page.” He had paged her and emailed her. Belt and suspenders.
The notes are small. They are domestic. “ILY” – I love you – rendered in the abbreviation of early-2000s text speak, sent over a system built for trading natural gas futures. Ellen asked if he made it on time. Brian worried about his grandmother. They were two people being married at the same company, using the tools at hand.
The Christmas Party
Frank Rossi worked at ECT – Enron Capital & Trade. Grace Nolan worked at Enron Net Works. On December 5, 2000, they conducted a flirtation across six emails in five hours, the kind of exchange that starts with nothing and ends with a phone number.
A previous Wednesday night that Rossi might not fully remember. Beer, xoxxo, a hangover. The party was for Enron North America. Nolan was Enron Net Works – different division, different invitation list. The misspelling of “boyfriend” is his. Matt was the boyfriend. He was not a big fan of parties. The thread’s final message arrived six minutes after the one before it.
The flirtation that had been conducted entirely in writing – carefully, with deniability, with exclamation points serving as plausible cover for sincerity – required a phone call to resolve. The email trail ends there. Whatever was said was not preserved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
It was December 2000. The stock was at $83. The Christmas party was an ENA affair. Enron Net Works was not invited. Matt was not a fan of parties. And Grace Nolan wanted to know if Frank Rossi was going to dance with her. That is the entire story. It is enough.
See Also
- Enron Bankruptcy – Filed December 2, 2001, five days after Wells noted the CNN trucks
- Gallows Humor – What people forwarded when they stopped caring about compliance