Vera Svechina: woman sneaks into Google headquarters
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.
