CEO calls cops on Wall Street Journal reporter

Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, apparently called the police on a Wall Street Journal who was looking into the huge mansion he was building in Hawaii, according to the Silicon Valley website Valleywag.

Valleywag wrote, “The Journal avoided mention of the clash when the piece went to print. You may remember the reporter’s name, Pui-Wing Tam. Yes, she’s the same person investigated by another Silicon Valley company, Hewlett-Packard, after she wrote about the board’s unhappiness with CEO Carly Fiorina. This paranoid behavior by Silicon Valley execs is becoming a habit.

“This is a Valleywag exclusive. For the juicy details:

“Pui-Wing Tam, one of the Journal’s more enterprising reporters, traveled to Hawaii’s Big Island to sneak a peek at the five-acre estate Benioff was putting up on by the shore. No great scandal. Benioff made his money legitimately, with the 2004 public offering of Salesforce.com, the online sales management service he founded. The journalistic interest was pretty innocent: depict the lavish lifestyle of one of Silicon Valley’s most colorful figures, the bungalow-style buildings, the thatched roofs, the lagoon-style pool, the 7.606 square-foot living area.

But I’ve heard from several Silicon Valley insiders that Benioff, for once outraged at press interest that he had not himself sought, had the police called on the Journal reporter. A spokesman for Dow Jones, which owns the Journal, emailed for comment, confirmed Pui-Wing was obstructed by construction workers on the Benioff property when trying to drive from a neighboring property out to the main road.

Read more here.