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CEO Nabbed for Identity Theft From Own Employees
BuzzardsBay writes "And you think your boss is a jerk? Check out this VARBusiness story about a tech CEO the feds say was using his employees' personal information to apply for loans and credit cards to the tune of $1 million. Somewhere a whole lot of businesses who bought this guy's managed-services pitch are cringing with the thought of who is taking care of their data now. And 50 employees are gonna have to sweat out their credit reports even as they look for new jobs. Now that's a lousy boss!"
Hang on. And we're NOT talking about Hewlett-Packard here?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
He didn't commit ID theft, that would have been horrible.
Now that's a lousy boss!
Well, he's either a lousy boss, or a very creative criminal.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
What do you suppose happens to your identity when a dotcom with DBs full of identities are crashing and burning? If there's a chance to patch things up by selling those identities, let me tell you, I've worked for people who would have done so gladly. None of you ever joined Collegeclub.com, did you?
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
These seem a bit more satisfying than simply throwing them in jail
CEOs run America. They provide a safe ship in which we are all protected from the ravaging storms of free market and evil euro trading blocks.
:-)
My question is... why do you hate America?
No... allow me. Troll -1
While it may seem wholly inappropriate for a business to use its employees' identities to defraud credit companies into providing loans, perhaps we should take a step back and look at the reason the CEO had to resort to such tactics in the first place. It is deathly hard to get a business loan.
While some entrepreneurs in hot sectors have to beat off VCs with their bare hands, other entrepreneurs in more established sectors can't get a second glance from VCs, much less banks. So if you've got this great idea and no one is going to fund it, what do you do?
Either you say "screw it" and give up your dream, or you try to find different cash reserves. That's what the CEO did. If the company did well, the payoff would be more than enough to pay back all the loans and extra on top of that for the burden of putting the employees in debt inwittingly.
I'm not saying that the CEO should be let off the hook for his criminal actions. I just think that the system should be set up to reward risk takers rather than banks that refuse to lend. It would go a long way towards improving the economy.
I'm safer posting my personal information on the web
The article seems light on details. Did the guy use some sort of key logger or computer filter, or did he go the low tech route and just use his employee's files from their hiring? Curiosity.
"Bartlett added that he hoped the Compulinx business could continue uninterrupted despite the CEO's legal woes."
Right.
If you really felt safe, then why did you post as an Anonymous Coward?? Hmmmm? Why?? Hmm??
And if you are asking why I am posting as an Anonymous Coward, well that is none of your business anyways. Harrumph.
... but I rushed to check the article to see if it was my CEO!
1. Incorporate
2. ??? = Work as a subcontracing corporation
3. Profit!!!
(4. -- Don't release ANY legal information to your general contractor)
I've done this for 18 years, and the tax breaks and freedoms are incredible.
"screw it" and give up your dream, or you try to find different cash reserves.
I have a dream about going to the Bahamas for 5 months and living a life of luxury. I figure I need about $500K to do this. It's ok if I rob a bank to finance this, then? I figure a bank is a "different cash reserve".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Do you have any common sense? Employers are -required- to have your SS # on file as a course of payroll/taxes.
Please help metamoderate.
and I thought my boss was a pr#$k. This beats anything he has ever done.
This message was brought to you by "Lack of Sleep."
Either you say "screw it" and give up your dream, or you try to find different cash reserves.
Sounds like the dilemma facing most Americans, but you don't hear a whole lot of people calling for everyone else to go out of their way to pave the road to their dreams, except for the socialists.
No, instead, they're expected to work hard, save their money, and one day they'll have the money to do what they want, within reason.
In other words, whatever this guy wanted to do was either not within reason, or he just needed to reinvest his company's profits in fashions more in line with his goals.
I'm impressed how you took a post emphasizing the move towards wider availability of capital to entrepreneurs as something socialist.
That's not what this is about, though. The company needed money to continue in business. Whether it was to pay salaries or to finance acquisitions, the money was earmarked for business purposes, not a 5 month vacation in the Bahamas for the CEO.
What this guy did is just plain old fraud. IF — however unlikely — he was thinking something along the lines of what you describe, he should have approached his employees and ask them for their support. This "I borrowed without permission" bullshit is just a cynical attempt at reality-engineering to make things appear as something other that theft.
+Raider of the lost BBS
And 50 employees are gonna have to sweat out their credit reports even as they look for new jobs
Makes you wonder why the courts don't automatically order credit reports of victims cleaned. The burden should NOT be on the victims, even if it is just a matter of sending a letter to the three agencies with a copy of the court docket or similar...
Fun trivia I learned from the manager at my co-op bank branch today: utility (cable, phone, power, gas, etc) companies have been moving towards a new electronic check cashing system ,where your bank never gets the cancelled check back.
Fun, if you need to prove to a credit reporting agency that you DID in fact pay a bill (or a credit line was not listed on your account) since that involves...drumroll please...sending in a copy of the cancelled checks! Likewise for electronic fund transfers and automatic credit card billing. The deck is stacked even further against consumers, just like how you have to pay to get your report if you don't live in certain states...and even if you get the report for free, you don't get your FICO score...
Please help metamoderate.
I was afraid it might be one of the smaller companies I've worked for in the last 7 years. Lucky for me it wasn't.
I'm impressed how you took a post emphasizing the move towards wider availability of capital to entrepreneurs as something socialist.
But when a system is not re-arranging capital based on a person's ability to impress investors/lendors on the merits of a business plan and other positive things - and is instead risking capital because, essentially, everyone who asks for it gets it (from where, I wonder?)... well, that's socialized business investment/lending.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
What is this? One midrange disk array?
I bet if the editor walked into their datacenter they'd find more than 40TB...
I figure either the person in question is either a sociopath or just plain incompetent. Because when a CEO has to resort to such tactics, he/she has already failed to do their job...
Wait a minute. You want me to have sympathy for the CEO of a company who commited credit fraud using his employees confidential information?
You know, this is really taking the whole victim mentality to the next level of insanity. "It's not his fault really, society forced him to because no one would loan him money." Give me a break!
Theft is wrong. Stealing from your employees is NEVER excusable. Please don't ask me to have sympathy for the crook. Corporations have a myriad of ways to legally screw employees without having to resort to outright theft.
You know, there are some things in the world that really are black or white, right or wrong. This is one of them. Please stop turning everything gray.
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
And because of that the employees will be branded as delinquent for the next 7 years.
By all means, throw the guy in jail. What he did was wholly illegal and unethical. However that doesn't solve any problem. Would it not be more prudent to both improve access to capital and provide a minimum level of protection for those hurt by identity fraud?
he must have been one of those linux fags. spending his money so he can suck the dicks of junkies in dark allies.
Great, could you please post your personal information? I will see to it that at least one small "company that needs money to continue in business" puts it to good use. If the company turns around and actually makes money, I will personally see to it that "your bills" are paid. If your credit suffers from the larger line of credit that you've taken out, tough luck, from late payments, we'll say sorry. The great thing about this is that you'll know your credit is being used where those employees didn't.
I thought you would never get fired if you chose Microsoft?
1. hire lots of employees
2. ???
3. profit!
at least we know what the ??? is now
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Holy cow. Way to miss the point.
Risk takers are rewarded. But it's not much of a risk when it's someone else's money now is it? If you're going to fail and go bankrupt it's not like that bank will ever see its loan back anyway.
He isn't the one that gets to make such calls. He deserves no leniency for his actions. If he had actually made the company successful, it still wouldn't excuse him. If he had a good idea, then he should have been able to get money to finance it. If he couldn't convince people that his ideas were solid and that they would get a return on their money, then he didn't deserve to be running the company. He's like every other schmuck out there that can't launch whatever idea he has. It doesn't give anyone the right, the obligation, or the duty to commit crimes in order to finance their business.
If anything, crimes like these need to have more severe penalties. There's far too much identity theft going on. Anyone caught doing it should be severely punished. White-collar crime in general should be punished much more severely than it is now, if only because it's so hard to build the cases in the first place. It's the same logic they're using for giving out harsh penalties for file-sharers. If the chances of getting caught are low, then the punishment must be more severe to have the desired deterrent effect.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If risk taking were rewarded, it wouldn't be risk. We reward success, not failure. Asking for rewards before results doesn't make sense. We may reward ingenuity, but not daring.
Anybody know whatever happened to Scott Draeker? (Or the employee whose credit card was used to make payroll?...)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
If I knew who you were, and that you had a position of authority with any company I would submit your name to the local authorities for investigation.
I would also submit your information to your companies accountants and list of some ethical concerns.
There is absolutely no justification for committing fraud (which is what this is) against employees, merely to stay in business.
If a company ends up in that position it may wish to ASK the employees to support the company, but you can't require it!
based on your nickname I expect you simply enjoy playing devils advocate, inspite of the pointlessness in this instance.
They wouldn't be risk takers if the system was set up to consistently reward them, now would they?
How come this doesn't hold good when employees steal money from their bosses? How come these arguments espoused by your Holy Thou not present whenever an employee has stolen from his boss to fund some "Hot idea" to "beat off" VCs?? Am sure you would be recommending "hang until death" for such an employee.... But when it comes to bosses, it is "please give me a break..." kind of plaintive wail from an overworked boss.... Surprising isn't it? There are TWO kinds of citizens really: "one who works for others", and "one for whom others work"... I think we (US) never grew out of the slave-owner mentality.... really. If this were EU or better yet France, am sure the boss's fortune would be seized and distributed to those affected, in addition to him being made "favorite" of Bubba...
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
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This reminds me of an ATM tech years ago. ATM as in Automated Teller Machine. He borrowed several thousands of dollars to bankroll his cocaine business. He had a deal go bad and lost all the money he was going to put back into the machine. Was he rewarded for his risk taking venture? If you count restitution, parole (yeah, no jail time as long as he made restitution payments), unemployment.
Someone hates these cans.
You fell into a troll's trap and modded insightful. Not bad!
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Actually I still think my boss is a jerk...
(I'm definitely kidding. Got 2 of the best bosses I've ever had just at the moment. And they don't even read slashdot, so this isn't just a suck up).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Because you also have to be a salesman as well. If I could sell, I'd have my own store.
...they want their fun trivia back.
,where your bank never gets the cancelled check back"
"Fun trivia I learned from the manager at my co-op bank branch today: utility (cable, phone, power, gas, etc) companies have been moving towards a new electronic check cashing system
There is only one word to sum up this story and thats unbeleivable!
Just wait - he'll show up in Brazil sipping margaritas with Enron's Ken Lay after his alleged death! See www.escapeartist.com
I wonder how many employees were supposed to get an extra large bonus this Christmas.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I just had to log in and take a crack at this one! One reason I love slashdot is when I read a post that really embodies the gist of it all and cracks me up. It's like taking a baseball bat, dipping it in epoxy and rolling it in crushed glass the way some of you call people on their bulls$%t! It really gets me fired up and makes me feel hopeful for the future. As a matter of fact, I feel slashdot should have a prime time news show! I'm so sick of the tongue biting mass media that gears itself for an eighth grade education level! Who decided that anyways? As for this guy, let's see how he likes sharing a cell with Big Bubba, he fu!@$d up, got caught & whined about it. Maybe Big Bubba will put his arm around him and sympathize in that special kind of way. I say don't cry now, you weren't crying when you were basically being a purse snatcher. And about the courts having credit reports cleared up, why isn't this the case? If we raise enough h#ll and it seeps into enough heads something can be done. I'm on fire and pacing the floor chomping at the bit here!
Now, it can be safely said that his employees weren't so discerning as to :)
tell a Chalk from Cheese
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
Bring on the evil euro trading blocks >:)
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
At a minimum, the CEO should be tortured to death. There is no excuse for what he is alleged to have done. If he is guilty, mere execution is far too lenient.
From reading your posts, you should be joining him in whatever punishment he does receive. Those that rationalize evil are worse than those that do it.
How come this doesn't hold good when employees steal money from their bosses?
This reminds me of when I worked for a Fortune 500 company some years back. The manager of my location *routinely* shaved time off of employee time cards in order to make his wage budget. But this guy would routinely have thieving employees arrested AND would manage to work up a big load of righteous indignation.
Whether it was to pay salaries or to finance acquisitions, the money was earmarked for business purposes,
I am willing to bet that the money was NOT "earmarked" for "business purposes" by these people, umm what do you call them again, oh yeah, the actual OWNERS of the money. This is theft, plain and simple.
You're trying to say that the end justifies the means. All I did was give you a different "end" to point out the flaw in your argument. According to you: if I kill you in order to help an old lady cross the road, that's ok then.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If the IRS hasn't figured this little trick out, they're kinda slow.
This is why I stopped looking for investors and folded my company.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
I don't know
Sheesh, what kind of idiot is in charge of your purchasing? Xserve RAID is 1/10th that price, fully supported, and it's probably not even the cheapest.
So, basically you're saying "Don't hate the player, hate the game"?
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
The truth: Not everything is black and white
The problem: People read that as "Everything's not black and white"
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Did anyone else notice this awful pornography in the tagging code?
javascript:tagsOpenAndEnter('06:11:02:0122215', 'asshole','')
My poetry site welcomes the unusual.
walk the punk CEO into the first conference room to mingle and meet the first five employees.
carry the punk CEO into the second conference room etc.
put punk CEO into wheelbarrow for the third room etc.
pour punk CEO into a glass and carry him into the fourth room etc.
and on and on until all the employees have had a chance to hands-on with the punk CEO.
the Department of Justice can provide marshals to escort the punk CEO from room to room. just tell them that the punk CEO had the contract to manage their health care....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It's not his fault, he's an addict! That, and some money touched him in a bad place when he was a kid. Now he is just trying to hide it all away to protect the children.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
who provide the safe ship and all that.
We make this country, and the CEOs are just parasites who tell us what to do and often get it wrong.
America doesn't need CEOs, and most certainly we do not need corporate personhood.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
A company can claim that you have no expectation of privacy at work, and to a large extent they are right, still doesn't mean they can break the law. Identity theft is a crime period. It doesn't matter how you got the information. For example my parents probably could, if they wished, steal my identity. They have all the relevant personal info like my name, birth-date, address, SSN, mom's maiden name and so on. What's more, they have it all legally. Most of it they know simply by virtue that I'm their kid. However that doesn't mean they can pretend to be me, I'm not a minor they are no longer my guardians. If they applied for a credit card in my name it'd still be identity theft an/or fraud and they'd still go to jail.
Nice mickey-mouse libel of socialism, friend.
Socialism is not a world of beggars. That (if you look on the street in NYC, Chicago, Portland, or any other major American city) is capitalism. Socialism is a world of workers, in which all who are able have a responsibility is to contribute to society, but in which (unlike in capitalism) you are guaranteed basic livability (not "pavement to your dreams" as per your propaganda) in exchange.
Since that money was spent on the company, does that mean the employees are the rightful owners of the company and all it's assets?
While it may seem wholly inappropriate for a business to use its employees' identities to defraud credit companies into providing loans, perhaps we should take a step back and look at the reason the CEO had to resort to such tactics in the first place. It is deathly hard to get a business loan.
Wow, is that a troll? If no, please provide me with your name, social security number, address and sample of your signature.
Socialism is a world of workers, in which all who are able have a responsibility is to contribute to society, but in which (unlike in capitalism) you are guaranteed basic livability (not "pavement to your dreams" as per your propaganda) in exchange.
Ah! I see. And if the guarantee is proving a little hard to deliver, that's when millions of starving workers get slaughtered (a, Stalin, what a gem he was - or that fabulous cultural revolution in China - nothing but guarantees, that was!) or the less "able" are packed up into slave labor camps? North Korea, of course, is a worker's paradise, that way.
What is "basic livability," to you? When you walk in New York (to use your example), which people, exactly are you talking about? Those who don't want to live in the offered shelter, eat the offered food, or accept the offered medical care? "Poor," and unworking people in the US live better than most of the world's population.
all who are able have a responsibility is to contribute to society
And those that have a brilliant idea or the drive to work longer hours at a harder task are thus rewarded by... being a slave to a larger percentage of the people that don't? Or do you solve that problem by not allowing a person who'd like to improve his family's life by working harder to embarass the system by actually being more productive and having something to show for it? Why, that would be evil.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I find it hilarious that the only examples of "evil" socialism you can come up with happen to be oppressive totalitarian regimes. That's like using Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as proof that capitalism is "evil".
Historically, White Collar Crime has been given less severe punishments because violence isn't involved. Violent and direct acts are usually more severely punished than non-violent and indirect ones.
This was non-violent (no threats, no weapons, no police chase), but was direct (targeting specific individuals). Plus, it sounded like he intended to pay the money back (not that that excuses it). Should be punished more severely than someone who steals from the petty cash drawer to pay their rent, but less severely than someone who robs a bank.
I find it hilarious that the only examples of "evil" socialism you can come up with happen to be oppressive totalitarian regimes. That's like using Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as proof that capitalism is "evil".
OK then: show me a nice, rosy, socialist system that would still be providing anything like a workable standard of living if it didn't enormously tax the productivity of people who run the engine of the economy by being capitalists. Such countries live off of their capitalist-minded productivity rock stars despite the socialist weight dragging them down. In countries where they try harder to act more like ideal socialists, you get... hordes of angry, unemployed youths burning cars and buses in the Parisian suburbs. Why isn't socialism providing them with a the nice happy living that it's supposed to?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That's easier to get than you might think.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
you don't realize that theft is a matter of CRIMINAL RECORDS which you can obtain via a background check?
A company putting claims of stuff you stole on a credit report is bullshit - how do you know it's even true? It's a CLAIM, it's not truth, it's not a conviction in a court of law. Any company that puts these things on a credit report is full of shit - if you defrauded a company then take them to court. Chicken shits libel people via credit reports and then use million dollar attorneys to dare them to sue. Honorable people take it before a criminal court judge.
I run a data center for a financial services corporation and I probably manage more people and money than you^squared, and I run a tight ship - apparently, you do not.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!