Mystery Woman Vera Svechina Snuck Into Google, Left Book And Letter

By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES | Fri Apr 22, 2011 6:56pm EDT
(Reuters) - A woman who claims Google is "inside her head and making her do things" quietly gained entry to the company's Silicon Valley headquarters last month, leaving behind a book and angry letter for the company's co-founders, police said on Friday.

Vera Svechina, a self-described filmmaker and former stripper, walked undetected into Google's main offices on March 14 and spent several minutes there, Mountain View police spokeswoman Liz Wylie said.

"An administrative staff member returned to her desk and found a book in Russian as well as a letter addressed to the two founders," Wylie told Reuters, referring to Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

"It didn't make any sense," Wylie said of the letter. "They were the ramblings of somebody with some kind of condition."

Google contacted police four days later, after reviewing security camera footage and finding that Svechina had breached the inner offices of the world's largest Internet company by walking in behind a visually impaired employee, Wylie said.

Police do not know the current whereabouts of Svechina, 37, who was last known to be living in San Francisco. She has not been arrested or charged in the case.

While Svechina was "a little bit angry" at Brin and Page in the letter, Wylie said, that did not constitute a criminal threat.

Company representatives for Google could not immediately be reached for comment.

Wylie said that Svechina came to Mountain View police last May to file a complaint against Google, claiming that the company "was inside her head and telling her to do things."

"At that point we evaluated her, determined that she was a threat to herself and took her on 5150 hold for psychiatric evaluation, because we felt she was potentially capable of hurting herself," Wylie said.

She said Svechina was taken to a hospital but has since been released.

According to the Business Insider blog, Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus obtained a restraining order against Svechina in March after filing a court declaration saying she had visited his home and threatened his wife and children.

On her blog, Svechina describes herself as a filmmaker who was born in Obninsk, Russia, studied at Moscow State University and worked in a Geisha club in Japan.

(Editing by Peter Bohan)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[cobraxus]

10:41 AM on 04/26/2011

wait a gosh darned minute...she left a BOOK AND LETTER!as opposed to a text or e-mail?
SHE'S A WITCH!

[stape45]

12:35 AM on 04/26/2011

"Snuck"? It's a good thing "feak" isn't a word.

[wilray]

03:39 PM on 04/25/2011

I can't wait for "Google, The Musical."

[random bear]

10:36 AM on 04/25/2011

I had no idea the Russians had ninja. This changes everything.

[neurotheist]

10:20 AM on 04/25/2011

Google's inside my head too, and sometimes I do things based on what is inside my head.

Guess I oughta write me a psycho-letter find a russian book sneak into google and let them know that they are the cause of all my problems.

That's a whole lotta herp rite there.

Also visually impaired employee? What was he working security? Damn, wonder how easy it is to upload a virus to their mainframe.

[VoteObama2012]

10:17 AM on 04/25/2011

At least HP didn't report that she "broke in" like other media, however, this article does have a picture:

http://www.businessinsider.com/alleged-stalker-broke-into-google-last-month-left-a-note-for-larry-and-sergy-2011-4

[Raiseup151z]

10:13 AM on 04/25/2011

google makes me do dirty things also.

[StJames]

10:07 AM on 04/25/2011

Are all of the headline writers for HP ESOL graduates.  There is no such word as "snuck"  the woman "sneaked" into Google.

[J0E1]

09:58 AM on 04/25/2011

So... what was the book and what is it about?

[AgentGrey]

09:35 AM on 04/25/2011

From Merriam-Webster:

" From its earliest appearance in print in the late 19th century as a dialectal and probably uneducated form, the past and past participle snuck has risen to the status of standard and to approximate equality with sneaked. It is most common in the United States and Canada but has also been spotted in British and Australian English."

Other sources agree. Language changes.

[AppleBaby]

08:41 AM on 04/25/2011

Who cares about the tense used, the woman is Putin's spy. LOLOL

[reviewingthesituation]

08:02 AM on 04/25/2011

"To sneak" is a regular verb. One forms its simple past and past participle by adding "ed."

"Snuck" is the equivalent of "ain't." It's commonly used and acceptable in very informal speech. But we expect a little better-quality English from people paid to write.

[Zach Foreman]

07:29 PM on 04/26/2011

Snuck: past participle, past tense of sneak (Verb)
1. Move or go in a furtive or stealthy manner.
2. Convey (someone or something) in such a way: "someone sneaked a camera inside". More »
Dictionary.com - Answers.com - Merriam-Webster - The Free Dictionary
►

[PunKinPai]

03:15 AM on 04/27/2011

It's common in conversation and in fiction, but shoul not be use in formal, journalistic or technical writing, since the reader is likely to know the correct form and consider the writer an uneducated hick. The headline writers for HP should know better.

[sixyfivepercentwater]

07:33 AM on 04/25/2011

"Snuck?" Really?

[PunKinPai]

07:06 AM on 04/25/2011

Snuck? Sneaked. Or better yet, since most HP headlines are in present tense, Sneaks.

[cubreporter]

06:47 AM on 04/25/2011

I had clients like this when I worked as a social worker. I once had a guy who swore that I sneaking into all of the groceries stores at night and was poisoning all of the ice cream. He was obviously schizo.

[richj45]

07:00 AM on 04/25/2011

Even paranoids have real enemies