Enter "Neo," a Latvian hacker whose strong sense of justice more than made up for his total lack of originality.
Saeima/flickrThe John Wick of the Baltic.
Neo decided to take a look at the national tax office data, then shared his findings with the public. That's how everyone found out that, for instance, managers at one municipal utility got a $25,800 bonus in 2009, while government officials "earned" as much as $7,100 a month. For reference, Latvian pensioners had to figure out how to live on the equivalent of around $172 a month, while teachers got $430. The biggest bank in the country was in such horrible shape after the crash that it had to be nationalized and wages were slashed ... for low-level staff, that is. The directors still retained their five-digit monthly salaries and, presumably, Scrooge McDuck money pools.
Even the cops who arrested Neo (Ilmars Poikans, an artificial intelligence researcher) had reason to like him, since they'd learned that their superiors were earning six times their salaries. Poikans initially faced a ten-year prison sentence, but authorities brought it down to 60 hours of community service ... probably after learning of a recent spike in the sales of pitchforks and guillotines.
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