FBI Raids OAL Inc.'s Headquarters

Dulles, VA, 1/5/2001 - The FBI staged their largest bust ever on OAL Inc., a major internet provider. When asked about the raid, the leader of the investigation, Jack Wagner, said "We've been working on this case for years, this is just the tip of the iceberg. This won't be the last raid of its type." Over 153 employees were arrested including the OAL president, Steve Crate, OAL chief operating officer Bill Pittman was quoted as saying "You wont get away with this!" as FBI agents led him to a waiting van. The evidence seized included 1 ton of documents, 53 computers over 3 tons of OAL CDs, and several gigabytes worth of OAL ad banners containing subliminal messages. Its rumored that documents were found that proved that OAL really was intended to stand for "Obscure and Laugh." Nobody is sure of the meaning that was associated with OAL up until now.

Currently there is no estimate as to how many advertising dollars OAL will lose as a result of this. The president of a major ad banner exchange, wishing to remain anonymous, said "The implications of this raid will be unimaginable, I can say that I will be removing all OAL ads from our exchange program, and will offer refunds to companies that have shown more than 10 OAL ads in the past month.

OAL is also expected to loose the majority of its customers by the months end. A top internet analyst was quoted a saying "This will be a big help to the small internet providers trying to get a good customer base, now that OAL is gone there will be millions of customers looking for new ISPs. This is also a big plus for the coaster and frisbee makers, people will stop using OAL CDs and start buying the real products.

The OAL raid has also affected the stock market, this afternoon it was announced that OAL CDs will be accepted as a trading currency. This followed reports that OAL CDs were selling for hundreds of dollars at auction. So many OAL stock holders were suddenly left with worthless stock that the government is offering to trade one OAL CD for each stock held, rather than risk another stock market crash.

This is also expected to affect OAL's sister company, CompuAid, another major internet provider. John Davidson told INews "We wont let this bring us down, we have been operating independently of OAL influence since we released CompuAid version 2.0. Hopefully this will help us, with the amount of OAL customers looking for new providers."

Nobody knows what will happen to TinyWarner, a cable company recently acquired by OAL. When asked about it, the president of TinyWarner's cable division said "We are meeting all this week to decide what will happen, if possible we would like to buy TinyWarner back from OAL before its too late." When asked about reports of subliminal messaging on TinyWarner's cable network he declined to comment.

Other products expected to feel effects from the bust are Marblis' IQC, OAL's instant messaging service, DigitalTown Inc., MapSearch, Nutscape.com and the Nutscape internet browser, OAL through phone, OAL everywhere, OAL MovieCall, OAL@skool, and SUNshine Megasystems.

In the press conference the FBI held concerning the OAL bust the FBI's director, Lou Free, told the press "We will be offering all OAL customers that signed up within the last month their money back. We will also start a special task force to help clean up the mess that OAL left behind."

Nobody is sure exactly how the online world will be effected, but one thing is sure, OAL has left a legacy that no one will forget any time soon.

-- JasonHill - 09 Feb 2007