Piracy Setup Discovered in WV Capitol Building

arakis writes "Someone in West Virginia has apparently spent tens of thousands in state funds to acquire computers and video gear to copy movies and music. From the article: 'Ferguson confirmed Tuesday that his staff found the makeshift audio-video studio amid his widening probe into spending and other abuses at the state General Services Division.' Looks like some employees are getting the axe for everything from purchasing abuse to time fraud."

Comments

Time Fraud?

[GuruBuckaroo]

What a great phrase! Makes me nostalgic for Doctor Who...

Obviously, they were fighting terrorism

[Dark Paladin]

We know that the MPAA has claimed that buying pirated movies supports terrorism.

Therefore, these proud patroits in West Virginia (death to all tyrants!) were simply providing a means for Americans to purchase pirated movies without supporting Al Queada (or however they spell thier name). After all, we've learned that breaking the law is perfectly legal as long as you put the words "fighting the war on terrorism" in front of it.

Now, if we can just get them to take care of that whole "get money from oil revenues to finance terrorism" thing, and we've got it licked!

Heh

[grub]

"Capitol Records"

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

"Studio"? I think not.

[Kayamon]

Pff... That's not a audio/video studio... that's just a guy downloading and burning some DivX movies.

I think "tens of thousands in state funds" is possibly a bit of an exaggeration.

Re:Oh, no!

[tulmad]

Anyone know what the "crack the headers" bit refers to for CDs?

It means "I'm a journalist and really have no clue what I'm talking about, so I'll make up words that sound dramatic".

I bet the CIO/IS Director is a MBA

[Kylere]

1. Take one college educated idiot (Usually a MBA)
2. Place in charge of a group of geeks who actually know their jobs
3. Pay Fines!

Did Anyone Check The Content?

[Black-Man]

Was it gigabytes of "Take Me Home Country Roads" on mp3 and the movie "Deliverence"?

Fired for overtime!

[LiquidCoooled]

Ferguson recently fired two division staffers, Gary McClanahan and Gary Bryant, after they claimed they had worked 18-hour days 119 times over the course of 2 1/2 years. Ferguson said a $466, 24-inch flat-screen computer monitor was found in Bryant's office but that no evidence suggests either man orchestrated the computer purchases.

Sometimes, an 18hour work day is exactly that.
Some places allow practically all the overtime you can log - simply because its cheaper to let you work greater hours than to hire/train somebody up to your role.

Firing them because they were hard workers is wrong.
Firing them because they made fraudulant claims is right.

(they do sound like the BOFH and PFY though don't they)

Gotta love that headline.

[plasmacutter]

Are we back into the days of yellow journalism here?

tens of thousands in "piracy equipment"? "computers and video gear"?!

last time i checked my 3 towers and 9 hard disks didn't cost tens of thousands (and two of them are macs!)

piracy setup? come on now! a tower with dvd decryptor and a couple hundred gigs of avis and mp3's is now a vast piracy setup. that's funny. If this is the headline for such a pitifully small collection, i wander if the headline for the arrest of someone on my res hall would read "international organized piracy syndicate taken down".

Re:Gotta love that headline.

[kimvette]

{
last time i checked my 3 towers and 9 hard disks didn't cost tens of thousands (and two of them are macs!)
}

You didn't buy them from state-approved vendors who are on the official bidding lists.

State bidding lists work like this: when the contract is about to end, the state invites vendors to bid (more actually they obfuscate the process to make it more difficult to newcomers to get in on the process, so the system is weighted toward favored vendors), in a superficial effort to meet state law in controlling budgets.

In reality, the bidding process is made as difficult as humanly possible. The regulatiosn are hard to find, each responsible person tells you to call someone else, and the folks who succeed in getting in on it invariably are the ones who wine and dine the officials.

ANYWAY the bidding process usually gives you two optios:

  - bid cost + percentage (which practically no one does because it would reveal the markup)
  - bid MSRP/List Price minus a percentage (and as you know on most products list price may be as low as 30% over cost, or as much as 300% to 400% over cost on average for different products and brands)

Once you win the contract, you now have the "right" to sell directly to state and municipal agencies, completely bypassing any further bidding processes. This is intended to reduce the budget by being able to plan cost of operations up front, and to eliminate paperwork and delays introduced by conventional bidding processes. Unfortunately it's all to common for vendors to get in on the list bidding a PITTANCE of a discount (example: Dell, 2% off of list price, which is an inflated work of fiction) knowing that the process to get IN on the bidding is painful at best.

Even worse, the lowest bid does NOT always win on the bid lists (this goes for both state and GSA lists) and in fact the officials/agencies overseeing the bidding process can choose to ignore the bids and pick whomever the heck they want to win. They can cite support reasons (Yeah. Dell support is just WONDERFUL compared to local Dell vendors), size of the company, or any other contrived reason that sounds remotely plausible.

Re:21st Century underground

[Elvis Parsley]

I'm just wondering where they're finding onions with corners.

Piracy in the workplace is common

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask anyone in tech support who has had to work in a bloated bureaucratic building overpopulated with secretaries. My favorite encounter was cleaning a couple thousand pieces of spyware off some secretary's computer. While I was doing that, she and another secretary were copying DVD movies on their computers, as well as their boss's computer. Apparently the boss was gone for the day. So basically, I was helping her burn DVDs faster.

Thank you Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Misleading headlines...

[happyfish]

The real issue here is not that someone had 14GB of mp3s or 40 movies; that simply makes for a better headline. The real issue is that someone in the capital was abusing the purchasing system and bilking the state for all they could. Buying barebones PCs on one purchase and then purchasing the remaining components on a separate order is a big no-no. It means that the PCs appear to be far less expensive, and exempts them from inventory control systems. The purchases basically fly under the radar, and the goods could be anywhere now; some other office, somebody's house, or sold on eBay.

Re:The $25,000 question

[mopslik]

There are two capitals in West Virginia: "W" and "V".

Ask Slashdot

[mjpaci]

{jesting}"I have access to almost unlimited funds through a closed-source purchasing system. I have identified a number of holes in the system that would allow me to syphon off funds to purchase a "pirate studio" and install it in the basement of the capitol building. Since I'd rather not pay the Microsoft tax, could you recommend a "free" (as in beer) solution for my embezzlement?"

Re:I seriously doubt it

[SatanicPuppy]

Carrot and the Stick.

RIAA: "See the nice juicy carrot, you know you want the carrot"
Congress: "Mmmmmm, carrot"
RIAA: "Now we want you to pass a law making it legal for our representatives to hunt iPod users, because piracy supports terrorism, and all iPod users are pirates."
Congress: "Welll, I don't know...there are a lot of iPods out there..."
RIAA: "This is a stick. This is what you get when you don't get the carrot. Wouldn't you rather have the carrot?"
Congress: "Well, yea, but we can't just..."
RIAA: "BAD CONGRESS! *WHACK* *WHACK* *WHACK* BAD LEGISLATORS MAKE THE BABY JESUS CRY! *WHACK* *WHACK*"
Congress: "Owwwww...okay, okay"