If You Had Access To A Multi Million Dollar Business Customers & Past Orders, What Would You Do?

You should probably prepare for your incarceration.

This is illegal.

I would operate under the principle "Don't be a dick".

And under that principle, I would immediately delete any copies that I had made, forget that I ever had access, and move on with my life.

Man I can't believe my eyes !!!! you are asking for a huge trouble. Get ready to spend a few years in jail if you do this

Taking advance of a customer is a breach of trust. Attempting in the first place to access the back-end of their site is beyond pardon. Sooner or later, they'll find out and off you go to long years of obscurity.

I'm sure it tempting but its certainly not worth jail time.

If there is no NDA or non-compete signed, then it's up to you. Sure your employer will be pissed, but the joke is on them for not being smarter.

My guess is that you won't be able to pull anything with that data rather than estimate what could be, and waste your time.

Karma will get you.

Not everybody in web-savvy. Even if the former client isn't "smarter", what the OP did was morally wrong and against the law. Talk of conscience here! You don't have to take advantage of someone who entrusted something into your hands.

I agree with the first response, get ready for Jail time...a lot of jail time. Theft of data, which this would be is not taken lightly.

It is an old article, but to give you an idea, take a look at this :
Companies warned as data theft disputes surge - Telegraph

Actually, I don't know if you'll go to jail- but I agree, it is a stupid move nonetheless and you should not do it ethically.

About 3 years ago, I created a great system for SEO. It was before Panda and Penguin, but even today, it is very white-hat.

I had assembled teams from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the USA to do ON-SITE SEO (nothing off site black hat spammy stuff) that had great results.

I was selling about 100 accounts a month at about 1800 dollars a pop.

I had a sales force of about 7 people selling it, but then the company that had the sales team sold the sales team to do mostly fulfillment. The company that they sold to still wanted me to fulfill on this marketing package - because the one they DID have was terrible. (spinning articles, directory submissions - stupid stuff like that)

So, they had sold a couple, and I had authorized that they sell a couple as to not lose any continuity of orders -

In the meantime, we had gone through some contract negotiations at this time. However, their contract was absolutely terrible - they were trying to get the rights to my product by the smallest of infractions, and so I got a contract attorney of my own to 'edit' the contract for me.

At this time, I had gone to their office to 'train on their backend system' and on their white board, I saw that they recently had an executive meeting but forgot to erase their notes on the white board.

And their NUMBER ONE priority as discussed in the meeting was to 'Reverse Engineer the marketing product'.

So, I called my attorney - to which he put in another clause in the contract that said they cannot do that at all.

So - long story short - the CEO got mad at that language, refused to sign the contract saying 'marketing is marketing, and you can't say that people can't market on the Internet techniques that work'.

So, he took ALL of the clients that I sold, reverse engineered my product, NEVER signed any contracts, and left me high-and-dry.

He's a scam artist anyway as I quickly learned through several Internet searches after the fact.

So, that company I dissolved - started a new company, selling a better product that I've been working on for a longer time anyway, that works even better. I'm way prouder of it, and I'd like to think I've grown from the experience.

Can that guy go to jail for it? I don't know. Was it an a-hole move? Yes.

But as an entrepreneur that doesn't give up, and doesn't allow failure, and KNOWS how to succeed, I'll do it anyway.

Plus, you can make a LOT of money helping people get what they want. And that is what I aim to do.

But by all means, don't be 'that guy'.

You're asking for trouble... not only may you face the legal system, but "they" can sue you silly too.