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!"

Comments

I'm a bit slow

[Dunbal]

Hang on. And we're NOT talking about Hewlett-Packard here?

Re:It's not what you signed up for, that's for sur

[Danse]

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.

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.