Slashdot Mirror
Apple Exec Stashed $150,000 In Shoe Boxes
angry tapir writes "US federal agents found more than US$150,000 in cash when they searched the house of Apple manager Paul Devine earlier this month, according to prosecutors. 'He had over $150,000 stored in shoe boxes,' Department of Justice Attorney Michelle Kane said. Devine was charged two weeks ago with taking kickbacks from Apple suppliers."
You don't use shoe boxes, they're too obvious.
iBox?
Seriously, if this guy was socking cash back and wanted to hide it from the feds, why didn't he think of better hiding places?
Heck, just watching the Sopranos would give you some better ideas for cash placement than shoe boxes all over the house.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Don't they realize that's just a prototype for the long-rumored iStash?
:wq
Maybe he just don't trust banks to be to big to fail anymore.
There are lots of ways to securely stash cash. shoeboxes under the bed are not one of them. a run to home depot for a post hole digger, some PVC pipe and caps = a money safe the feds wont find.
Although this guy does not look like the type that knows how to run a complex device like a shovel.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A friend of mine told the story of his grandfather hording cash. Seems his grandpa was the mayor and, well, you get the idea. The cash was kept in a cabinet in the kitchen.
One day grandma comes home to find him and grandpa playing monopoly with real money. She was not amused.
We probably have about $150,000 in shoeboxes in my apartment. Unfortunately, they're in the form of my wife's shoes.
The balance on his bank account was 12 dozen shoes.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Um, I hate the obviously anti-Apple news as much as the next Apple fanboi but this is hardly negative Apple news. In fact, I can't find even a vague hint of anything negative being directed at Apple in this situation.
More so, this is kind of a big deal in the geek and tech industry. If this doesn't qualify as news than I have absolutely no understanding of the word. I would say that the employee of one of the top tech companies being caught in a scam where he made off with over $1 million dollars is quite certainly news for nerds and stuff that matters.
One of the problems with stashing $150,000 in cash is that you lose some $4,500/yr (or more) due to inflation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Historical_Inflation_Ancient.svg
Oh so many jokes, and rightly. But. I will say this - even if you've made money legitimately, I'd say there's good reason to keep a little cash on hand. It's rare, but not unheard of (especially in recent years) for banks to fail. If I had a million or more, I think I'd like to keep 100,000 or so available as cash on hand, in case the rest of my money either got frozen temporarily (e.g. while the FDIC or other government or law enforcement agency takes over the bank and does an investigation), or disappears forever.
I don't think, however, I'd keep it in shoeboxes. Safe vaults were invented for a reason.
This isn't an anti-Apple story beyond some insight into some possible HOWs and WHYs regarding how secrets get leaked, suppliers get selected and how clone devices get designed and produced so quickly. Having increased knowledge of how the supply and manufacturing of [in]famous gadgets get handled is certainly of interest to me!
Um, I hate the obviously anti-Apple news as much as the next Apple fanboi but this is hardly negative Apple news. In fact, I can't find even a vague hint of anything negative being directed at Apple in this situation.
That's odd, this story causes me to wonder how much corruption is rampant at Apple if we scratch the surface and find shoe boxes with cash ... whatever the case here in the US, this certainly illustrates the growing problems that Apple and many other companies are having with foreign counterparts guilty of "when in Rome" infractions against ethics and business.
I used to think "Made in America" when I bought an Apple product. Then after realizing it was all coming from Taiwan and China I thought "Invented in America, Made in China" but I still imagined this premium I was paying lead to good American ethics and proper treatment of employees to consumers. The deaths of nine or more plastics workers in Apple's iPhone supplier followed by a million in kickbacks being stored in shoe boxes by a corrupt Apple Manager and suddenly I realize that buying Apple just means you're paying a premium on something that might provide you a better experience but really employs all the same corruption inherent in almost any very large business.
While I'm not faulting Apple anymore than -- say -- Samsung or Sony, they've dropped from high standards of worker and consumer ethics all the way down to 'one of the rest.' Maybe they're simply too big to control that now but you better believe this is negative to someone like me. I've only ever bought (to my knowledge) iPod shuffles as gifts and a single exclusive album on iTunes but you won't catch me buying anything else from them for a while.
My work here is dung.
from TFA:
Prosecutors say that Devine shared confidential information on Apple products such as the iPod and iPhone in exchange for cash kickbacks. He allegedly provided suppliers with projected sales figures, data on how much it cost Apple to produce the products, and pricing bids from supply chain competitors.
This looks a lot more like "corporate espionage" than "kickbacks". I usually consider kickbacks to mean that he accepted bribes from clients for favoritism. But this guy was basically getting paid to spy on his employer and provide intelligence.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I once had a boss who took kickbacks from vendors. I remember one time CDW gave him a huge plasma TV, and an iPod, and many other goodies. He also used to rent SUV's on the company credit card and use it to take his family on trips. He was eventually fired.
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
in the Banana Stand
Doesn't anyone know how to launder money any more? Steal way more money than you need, run it through some partially legitimate business, take part of it as profit from the business, but be able to keep the remaining result in a bank.
Scratch-off lotto tickets clear darn near 50% rate of return. I've seen this first hand a couple decades ago working at a small town food store. Elderly guy buys $500 of lotto every freaking day... that's about 200K dirty in for about 100K clean out annually. Couldn't think of any other explanation for how he could finance his endless purchases.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Sir, I am an exiled Nigerian prince who needs some assistance in a financial transaction . . .
They hire Procurement people to wrestle every penny out of a partner; and then expect them to behave differently when it comes to their own pockets? Sounds like poor controls to me.....
Isn't it enough to be proud of buying something carefully designed in America, regardless of who manufactured it?
Pride- sure, but that's not the topic at hand, which is all about jobs. Saying "buy American" about Apple is pointless since the majority of Apple-related jobs lie in manufacturing, and those are neither unavailable to American workers, nor favor using American resources.
Or heck, just to be happy with something well designed at all, regardless of origin. A well designed product counts as a win for the human species, I would say, since it serves as a model and an example anyone can follow.
That's an interesting way of thinking but the fact is we're in a world where international economic competition matters to individuals (in jobs and standard of living), and "an example anyone can follow" translates easily into cheating through cheap knockoffs and what idiots call "piracy". And then there's still the argument that Apple's ability to profit is the only guarantee that humanity will have such "wins", and the reason "Intellectual Property" is so prominent in modern diplomacy.
Buying Apple is a good way to feel good about being rich/fashionable, not American. If you want to feel good, buy an American car, but check the parts list to ensure it wasn't just assembled here.
Inflation is currently running more like about 1% per year, has been in that neighborhood for quite a while, and there's reason to believe that we could be entering a period of deflation. And your typical passbook savings is paying a fraction of a percent in interest. So, while there are still a lot of good reasons to keep money in the bank (if your house burns down, your cash is gone... but if your bank burns down, your money doesn't. FDIC insurance. Etc.), the rate of return vs. inflation isn't really one of them.