Slashdot Mirror
Four IT Consultants Charged With $80M NYC Rip-Off
theodp writes "It's I-told-you-so time for Slashdot commenter frnic, who smelled a crime last March after reading that New York City had dropped $722 million on its still-under-development CityTime Attendance System. Nine months later, US Attorney Preet Bharara charged 'four consultants to the New York City Office of Payroll Administration ... for operating a fraudulent scheme that led to the misappropriation of more than $80 million in New York City funds allocated for an information technology project known as "CityTime."' Three of the four consultants were also charged — along with a consultant's wife and mother — with using a network of friends-and-family shell corporations to launder the proceeds of the fraud. Dept. of Investigations Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn called it a shame that 'supposed experts hired and paid well to protect the city's interests were exposed as the fox guarding the hen house.'"
How does something "slip through the cracks" for 7 years?
A project that was $68 million total... instead was $100+ million (a year?!!)
If the city DIDN'T spend MORE-THAN-HALF-A-BILLION maybe they wouldn't be raising the fare on the subway/bus for the 3rd time in just a few years.
Here's a thought.. once a year look at projects and see if they were supposed to be done already. You can pay someone $1,000 a MINUTE to do this and still save money by finding another project like this.
But that was a corporation. Corporations and their boards never go to jail except in enron-style cases.
And that was a tort, not a crime. Learn the difference. It may save your life.
They're being charged with a crime, and it's 4 guys.
It's different this time. The people are small enough to be crushed without too much effort or revelations of $IMPORTANT_PEOPLE as part of the fraud.
--
BMO
So many accusations of criminal behavior are made on Slashdot daily that sooner or later one was bound to be right.
True, but not the real question here: what is fmic's personal ratio of accusations:indictments? Better than most Slashdot commenters, I reckon. That's worth noting.
Clever
To be fair, it may be "old news" for some, but not for me. This is the first I have heard of it. So there!
I think if it is relevant and hasn't yet been mentioned on slashdot yet, then it should be posted regardless of its age. After all, age is relative as I am sure others will agree. I do not watch TV news too often and do not get or read the New York Times either. Perhaps it speaks badly for me that I rely on Slashdot as a news portal (though not exclusively, it is still one of many sources) but as things go, slashdot provides a "readers digest" version of the news from all over.
And hey! It wasn't a dupe as far as I can tell, so it's all good.
You actually have to ask that question? The answer is so obvious it's impossible to miss.
Greed makes you stupid. Greed is self-destructive. Greed keeps you thinking you can keep on getting away with anything.
So, that's the answer? The same thing that caused them to want to steal in the first place: Greed.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
...is that everyone does it differently, and no one wants to conform to a uniform system. Why, you might ask? Because the current system is in place and, more importantly, people have learned how to game it.
I went through something like this years ago with a local government t&a project. There was a core group that understood it's value ( namely, IT and payroll ), but everyone else had been using tricks of the current, in place system ( which varied from dept to dept ) to get longer lunches, swap shifts or plain, flat out not work and get paid for it.
We never did get universal buy-in for the project, and it ended up dieing ( although, to be fair, the vendor didn't help things much ). Even in the best of times, T&A is a highly complex subject that almost no one understands. When you have people actively trying to undermine your efforts...well, you can imagine how much progress one might make.
( note: the depts that gave us the most headaches, btw, were fire and police. The "old boy" network had been in place so "billy bob" might take off a couple extra hours because he was the chief's friend. Needless to say, the new time keeping software didn't keep track of that "accurately", and people's feelings got hurt. )
The second most important single document in project management - the stakeholders list.
The most misunderstood term in project management - stakeholder.
Stakeholder == anyone who might possibly want to stab you with a pointy stick.
Most important document - a list of motivations and pain points of the stakeholders. Third most important - payment terms. Fourth - project delivery specifications.
Feel free to disagree, and, good luck.
;-p