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DOJ Names Dozens of IT Vendors in Kickback Scheme

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the jig-is-up dept.

grantus writes "Today, the U.S. Department of Justice joined three whistleblower lawsuits against Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Accenture alleging a massive kickback scheme on government contracts. Among the IT vendors listed in the lawsuit as Accenture partners are Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Dell and Oracle."

10 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. A show of hands if you are surprised by Mathness · · Score: 4, Funny

    A show of hands if you are surprised by kickbacks and corruption in the goverment.

    --
    Carbon based humanoid in training.
    1. Re:A show of hands if you are surprised by vought · · Score: 4, Funny

      Gonzales: "Quick - look over there!"

    2. Re:A show of hands if you are surprised by Jarjarthejedi · · Score: 4, Funny

      Okay then, show of hands for those surprised that corporations are acting corrupt.

      Hmm...looks like the same number of hands...3...oh wait, little timmy's got both hands up. Balmer...put your other hand down...that won't work anymore.

      --
      There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
    3. Re:A show of hands if you are surprised by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      As an IBM employee, I can assure you that such kickbacks are against the corporate code of ethics. Every employee is required to be trained and tested on proper ethical behavior, and therefore it is impossible that IBM is involved in any way.

      Please excuse me while I retreat to the washroom and express amusement at a funny story I just remembered.

    4. Re:A show of hands if you are surprised by rucs_hack · · Score: 4, Funny

      Note to self: Don't try to write political posts at 5AM when you haven't been to bed yet. XD

      On the contrary, since you are commenting on slashdot, that is the ideal time.

      Not only that, but you make no direct reference to the article, hinting that you haven't read it, which again, is spot on.

      However, using words like Oligarchy at 5am can be dangerous, and you used it twice...

    5. Re:A show of hands if you are surprised by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Which Ballmer are you talking about? Both hands up AND not holding a chair? ;).

  2. Don't expect much ... by aeschenkarnos · · Score: 4, Funny

    Some say "kickbacks and corruption", some say "rewarding loyalty and encouraging capitalist innovation". Tomayto, tomahto. It depends if you're honest, or a Republican.

  3. Sounds like it's time... by Guppy06 · · Score: 2, Funny

    for several US Attorneys to be fired for wholly unrelated reasons that the Attorney General had no involvement in.

  4. Re:A list of those who don't would be shorter by The_Wilschon · · Score: 4, Funny

    And how, out of curiousity, were you privy to this information?

    In Other News, Steve Ballmer once bragged (under an NDA'd room that included Margaret Thatcher and Celine Dion) that he'd just spent the night with three monkeys in a sleazy motel. (They were typing the windows source code on a couple of typewriters for him...)

    --
    SIGSEGV caught, terminating

    wait... not that kind of sig.
  5. How to win a tender by smorar · · Score: 5, Funny
    This story reminds me of a joke I received via email in the context of South Africa:

    The Minister of Public Works wanted to remodel her office, so she invited different contractors for tenders. One was from Johannesburg, one from Durban and the last one from Soweto.

    "OK gentlemen, I want a nice job," She said, "Let's hear from Jhb?"

    The guy took out his ultrasonic measuring device and laptop and began measuring, scrawling on the computer, calculating. Eventually he said "R90 000, Madam Minister,"

    "That seems like quite a lot of money! Why R90,000?"

    "You see," he replied, "that's R40 000 for material, R40 000 for labour and R10 000 for my profit".

    She seemed OK with that and turned to the Durban contractor. "So how much do you want to do the job?" she asked.

    The Durban fella took out a rusted tape measure, broken clipboard and a blunt pencil. He took some measurements, scratched some calculations on the back of his Rothmans box and came up with a figure of R70,000.

    "That's interesting!" said Stella. "Explain the R70 000?"

    "Simple, Madam Minister, I got a brother-in-law in the hardware trade, so that's R35 000 for materials, R30,000 for my guys, and R5,000 for my profit and all."

    She was amused but happy to accept the explanation.

    Then she asked the Soweto contractor for his quotation. He just smiled, looked the minister in the eyes and said, "R270 000!"

    "Yoh Yoh Yoh!.... How did you come to that amount without even taking your measurements? What is that amount for?"

    "That's R100 000 for me and R100 000 for you!"

    "So what about the remaining R70 000?" "We hire that guy from Durban to do the job!!!"