A Bloomington technology firm claims in a federal lawsuit that one of its former top employees stole its secret customer list and used it to bolster his own competing company.
Mavidea filed the seven-count federal lawsuit April 3 against its former IT business lead Jamie Warmbir; his wife, Charlotte; and his company, Warmbir IT Solutions. Mavidea claims it suffered at least $2.7 million in damages as a result of Warmbir’s actions. They’re accused of violating state and federal trade-secrets law and civil conspiracy.
Warmbir's attorney, A. Christopher Cox of Bloomington, said Thursday he had no comment on the suit.
Mavidea provides IT solutions, software development, digital marketing and website design. It claims Warmbir “devised a scheme to forcibly take the IT division from Mavidea.” As Warmbir left his job in February, Mavidea claims he gave the company an ultimatum—sell the IT division to him for the price that he demanded, or he would take the customers and employees without paying them anything for it.
Warmbir had access (and “memorized or otherwise recorded”) Mavidea’s customer list, according to the lawsuit. In 2019, Mavidea says its staff made 17,516 phone calls to prospective IT customers. It maintains a confidential database of that sales funnel.
“Locating customers that are in need of essentially outsourcing their IT department is a difficult task,” Mavidea said in the lawsuit.
Within a few weeks of Warmbir leaving Mavidea, “his efforts resulted in eight contract terminations with Mavidea” and “at least one prospective customer signing with (Warmbir’s) company instead of Mavidea,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit remains pending. Mavidea is represented by Bartell Powell based in Champaign.
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