Corporate America has never been popular. But now it’s on heightened alert for angry customers

New York

  

Three weeks after the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, companies and executives are closely monitoring threats from customers and shoring up their security vulnerabilities.

A Texas man was arrested Friday for allegedly threatening Capital One executives over email, in which he expressed frustration over a disputed debt. Taylor Bullard, 34, claimed he had already paid $543 he owed and lashed out at the bank for its persistent efforts to collect the sum, according to court documents.

“This debt is not valid. I paid (Capital One) several times for this same account,” Bullard wrote in an email to the company on December 12. “Call me before I show up to one of their locations with a machete and gasoline.”

Bullard told the FBI that he sought attention and “wanted to see the companies sweat,” rather than intend to harm himself or others, the affidavit says.

Letters like these are commonplace and show the continued tension between corporate America and its customers.

Anger toward companies is apolitical: Both Democrats and Republicans have mostly negative and nearly identical opinions of banks and financial institutions and large corporations, according to Pew Research Center polling conducted earlier this year.

Just 38% of Republicans and Democrats view banks positively, according to Pew. Republicans and Democrats have similarly negative opinions of large corporations – just 32% of Republicans and 26% of Democrats view their impact positively.

But polling also shows that Americans trust business more than other institutions like the government, and people say they have high levels of trust for their own employers and CEOs, said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management.

“There is no surge of anti-corporate sentiment,” he said in an email. “The level of threats to executives is stabilized now back at normal levels of grievances. There are always disgruntled and deranged emailers out there – with heightened concerns only for health insurance execs.”

But in the wake of the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s murder, companies have stepped up security measures. The killing unleashed a flurry of rage and frustration on social media at the health care industry. The suspect in the killing, Luigi Mangione, expressed anger at the insurance industry and “corporate greed, according to a New York City Police Department intelligence report obtained by .

Since the attack, companies have temporarily closed headquarters, scrubbed their websites of top executives’ photographs and increased armed security details for key leaders.

Many companies spend little on executive protection or corporate security, but they are re-evaluating their policies in the wake of the murder, said Stephen Ward, the CEO of Polaris Corporate Risk Management, which provides security services to a wide range of companies.

Executives who once resisted having security details have come to accept that they may be necessary. More companies are requesting Polaris’ monitoring services on social media and other online platforms to track and assess potential threats, he said.

“Companies are grappling with the idea of how they move forward” after the murder, Ward said.

’s Hanna Park contributed to this article.