‘Office Space’ movie inspired employee to steal $302,278, police say

Ermenildo “Ernie” Castro watched the movie “Office Space” and thought, “I could do that,” according to court documents.

And so the software engineer, much like the disaffected tech workers in the 1999 cult classic, allegedly injected malicious computer code into his employer’s information-technology system. For months, that code rerouted a portion of the shipping charges on tens of thousands of customers’ purchases, sending money to an account controlled by Castro instead of the online retailer he worked for, Seattle police wrote in court documents.