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> REMAINING U.S. CEOs MAKE A BREAK FOR IT
> Band of Roving Chief Executives Spotted Miles from Mexican Border
>
> San Antonio, Texas
>
> Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining
> CEOs
> of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the
> Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way and writing
> the
> entire rampage off as a marketing expense.
>
> "They came into my home, made me pay for my own TV, then double-booked
> the
> revenues," said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just north of El Paso.
> "Right
> in front of my daughters."
>
> Calling themselves the CEOnistas, the chief executives were first
> spotted
> last night along the Rio Grande River near Quemado, where they bought
> each
> of the town's 320 residents by borrowing against pension fund gains. By
> late
> this morning, the CEOnistas had arbitrarily inflated Quemado's
> population to
> 960, and declared a 200 percent profit for the fiscal second quarter.
>
> This morning, the outlaws bought the city of Waco, transferred its
> underperforming areas to a private partnership, and sent a bill to
> California for $4.5 billion. Law enforcement officials and disgruntled
> shareholders riding posse were noticeably frustrated.
>
> "First of all, they're very hard to find because they always stand
> behind
> their numbers, and the numbers keep shifting," said posse spokesman Dean
> Levitt. "And every time we yell 'Stop in the name of the shareholders!',
> they refer us to investor relations. I've been on the phone all damn
> morning."
>
> "YOU'LL NEVER AUDIT ME ALIVE!"
>
> The pursuers said they have had some success, however, by preying on a
> common executive weakness. "Last night we caught about 24 of them by
> disguising one of our female officers as a CNBC anchor," said U.S.
> Border
> Patrol spokesperson Janet Lewis. "It was like moths to a flame."
>
> Also, teams of agents have been using high- powered listening devices to
> scan the plains for telltale sounds of the CEOnistas. "Most of the time
> we
> just hear leaves rustling or cattle flicking their tails," said Lewis,
> "but
> occasionally we'll pick up someone saying, 'I was totally out of the
> loop on
> that.'"
>
> Among former and current CEOs apprehended with this method were Computer
> Associates' Sanjay Kumar, Adelphia's John Rigas, Enron's Ken Lay, Joseph
> Nacchio of Qwest, Joseph Berardino of Arthur Andersen, and every Global
> Crossing CEO since 1997. ImClone Systems' Sam Waksal and Dennis
> Kozlowski of
> Tyco were not allowed to join the CEOnistas as they have already been
> indicted.
>
> So far, about 50 chief executives have been captured, including Martha
> Stewart, who was detained south of El Paso where she had cut through a
> barbed-wire fence at the Zaragosa border crossing off Highway 375.
>
> "She would have gotten away, but she was stopping motorists to ask for
> marzipan and food coloring so she could make edible snowman place
> settings,
> using the cut pieces of wire for the arms," said Border Patrol officer
> Jennette Cushing. "We put her in cell No. 7, because the morning sun
> really
> adds texture to the stucco walls."
>
> While some stragglers are believed to have successfully crossed into
> Mexico,
> Cushing said the bulk of the CEOnistas have holed themselves up at the
> Alamo.
>
> "No, not the fort, the car rental place at the airport," she said.
> "They're
> rotating all the tires on the minivans and accounting for each change as
> a
> sale."
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