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I don't understand this... If I as an individual did the same actions, I would be charged with fraud. I might even serve time in prison for it. In this company
by mabbo 8y ago
I don't understand this... If I as an individual did the same actions, I would be charged with fraud. I might even serve time in prison for it.
In this company, someone up the chain of command knew they were doing this. Someone at some point was presented with "we'll give them fake scan results to upsell our services" and said "yes".
Why is that person not being charged with fraud, just like I would have been? What makes it just a fine and a slap in the wrist just because they're a big company?
- fabianhjr 8y ago> What makes it just a fine and a slap in the wrist just because they're a big company? Yes ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsplLiZHbj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsplLiZHbj0 )
- jdsully 8y agoI initially avoided that Dirty Money series because I thought it was going to be just another surface level rage bait documentary - like so many "finance" documentaries have been since the great recession. But it was very well done and had high information content. I wasn't surprised to learn it was from the same director as The Smartest Guys in the Room (Enron Documentary). Bethany McLean even makes an appearance.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ada1981 8y agoCEOs don’t go to jail.
- jjeaff 8y agoTell that to Jeff Skilling, Bernie Madoff, Martin Shkreli, Denis Kazlowski, Martha Stewart, Joseph Naccio, John Rita's, Sanjay Kumar, Sam Waksal, Marty Grass... the list goes on and on.
- nerdponx 8y agoCEOs don't go to jail unless their crimes affect other CEOs.
- xeromal 8y agoMoving goalposts
- HarryHirsch 8y agoSmall fish, the lot of them. We'll soon see if the law works, if it does, both Elizabeth Holmes and a Boeing executive will do time for 10 years.
- jstandard 8y agoWhat is your criteria for size of fish? Enron's market cap was $60 Billion.
- exelius 8y agoEnron went down because the people they ripped off had the power to do so.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoThe whole of Congress gets statistically impossible returns on the stock market, but Martha Stewart got to do time over a five-figure sum obtained by information gained at a party. That's not equitable.
- exelius 8y agoI mean, what do you expect congress to do — pass laws restricting their ability to do this? Because it’s not illegal today, and it’s literally the reason a lot of them got into politics in the first place. Even guys like Bernie can’t help themselves.
- chrischen 8y agoMost likely support.com sold office depot on this and operated it to give them a cut of the proceeds.
- downandout 8y agoSomeone should go to jail. I suppose they still may - the FTC only has civil authority, but they often refer cases to the FBI for criminal prosecution once they have their pound of flesh on the civil side. The government has criminally charged people involved in these kinds of cases - the most notable of cases can be viewed here [1]. But because Office Depot is a large company, it seems nobody will suffer real consequences. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/266065/fbi-busts-international-scareware-rings https://www.pcmag.com/news/266065/fbi-busts-international-sc...
- mikeash 8y agoSmart modern companies arrange it so that upper management never has that sort of moment. They break the law by setting up perfectly legal incentives and requirements that just happen, by their combined effects, to encourage or even require the minions to break the law. At no point is this ever acknowledged, and there is almost always a clear written policy stating that employees are expected to obey all relevant laws and regulations. This ensures that, when systematic fraud like this is uncovered, there is nobody to take responsibility and nobody has to go to jail, or at least nobody who matters.
- baroffoos 8y agoSo just apply a massive fine to the company itself.
- simonh 8y agoAll fines come out of executive bonus payments first.
- koolba 8y agoNo they don’t. On the contrary executive pay, is often locked in and any fines come out of shareholders bottom lines. If anything, rank and file employee bonuses are the ones that will take a hit as their “bonus” compensation is not guaranteed by contract.
- AlexTWithBeard 8y agoThe pays are locked, the bonuses are usually not. There may be a sign-up bonus (rarely) or a golden parachute (even more rare), but the whole idea of the bonus is to be tied to the company performance.
- DataWorker 8y agoIt seems like there are numerous examples that prove you wrong from Goldman Sachs to PG&E.
- Zarath 8y agoFrom "Capitalist Realism" by Mark Fisher: “[I]t is a mistake to rush to impose the individual ethical responsibility that the corporate structure deflects. This is the temptation of the ethical which, as Zizek has argued, the capitalist system is using in order to protect itself in the wake of the credit crisis - the blame will be put on supposedly pathological individuals, those’ abusing the system’, rather than on the system itself. But the evasion is actually a two step procedure - since structure will often be invoked (either implicitly or openly) precisely at the point when there is the possibility of individuals who belong to the corporate structure being punished. At this point, suddenly, the causes of abuse or atrocity are so systemic, so diffuse, that no individual can be held responsible… But this impasse - it is only individuals that can be held ethically responsible for actions, and yet the cause of these abuses and errors is corporate, systemic - is not only a dissimulation: it precisely indicates what is lacking in capitalism. What agencies are capable of regulating and controlling impersonal structures? How is it possible to chastise a corporate structure? Yes, corporations can legally be treated as individuals - but the problem is that corporations, whilst certainly entities, are not like individual humans, and any analogy between punishing corporations and punishing individuals will therefore necessarily be poor. And it is not as if corporations are the deep-level agents behind everything; they are themselves constrained by/expressions of the ultimate cause-that-is-not-asubject: Capital.” Not that it proposes any answers necessarily. Your post just reminded me of this quote.
- jgtrosh 8y agoIt seems to imply the only ethical form of control is through capital directly, so through fines. Though it seems obvious that in such a case others in the company would want to punish the individual who got caught.
- jacquesm 8y agoThere is such a thing as the corporate death penalty: revoking the corporate charter. It is used extremely rarely, the main argument goes something like 'oh, but there are so many people working there who had nothing to do with this' and fines levied typically are much less than the profits gained with the lawless behavior. Another option I see is that the CEO of a company would be automatically personally held responsible for any wrongdoing. There is of course a lot of stuff you could say to shoot that down, for instance that employees might try to do a joe job on their CEO, but a CEO is also in the position to enact meaningful oversight by creating corporate structures to ensure compliance.