Oracle exec Charles Phillips picked the wrong woman to two-time when he took up with billboard mistress Yavaughnie Wilkins. New information shows that the public embarrassment she inflicted on her former beau was payback for big lies he told during the 8 1/2 years they dated seriously. "They lived together for the majority of their relationship. She thought she was in a long-term, monogamous relationship," said Wilkins's cousin Misha Davila. "It never occurred to any of us that he was still married."
Two years after they began dating in 2001, Phillips lied and told Wilkins he’d divorced his wife. The pair moved together to San Francisco, where friends say they had a good relationship. "The typical red flags weren't there," Davila told the NY Post. "The only time he wasn't with her was when he was traveling on business. I have no idea now whether he really was on business trips. It's all very upsetting. He was a real part of the family." But in 2009 Wilkins received an anonymous email that exposed his lie. She put the billboards up to show her boyfriend “that the relationship was real."
The Daily News reported that in 2004, when she was in graduate school studying journalism, Wilkins penned an essay warning men not to yank women around. She wrote, "Men need to be cognizant of the devastating penalties for making the mistake of loving a woman and at some point changing his [sic] mind." Four years later she pasted huge, shaming photos of herself and Phillips on billboards in New York, directing viewers to a website with more photos and love letters from the Oracle president. A quote from him reads: "You are my soulmate forever." Though the billboards in NY and Atlanta have been taken down, it's been estimated that the public embarrassment will cost Phillips $250,000—a devastating penalty indeed.
