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Verizon Tech Charged In $4.5M Equipment Scam
McGruber writes "Michael Baxter, a 62-year-old man from Ball Ground, Georgia, was recently arrested and charged with multiple counts of fraud for allegedly placing false equipment orders. As a network engineer at the southeastern regional headquarters of Verizon Wireless, Baxter allegedly submitted hundreds of fraudulent service requests to Cisco. According to prosecutors: 'The service requests were fraudulent in that no parts needed to be replaced, and instead of placing the replacement parts into service in Verizon Wireless network, Baxter simply took them home and sold them to third-party re-sellers for his own profit.'"
Building routers 1 part at a time...
1. First filed a fraudulent service request ...
2. Pocket the part
3.
4. Resell it for a profit!
He wants to be a defense contractor.
The real crime here might be the price of Cisco equipment.
If he wasn't so greedy, he probably could of gotten away with it.
A little here, a little there.
At least he got his woman some cosmetic surgery, she's probably going to need to find a new man.
Be seeing you...
on the plus side, there's a chance that some of that "new" Cisco gear bought from that online auction side really is new!
"I would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for that darn Cisco Kid"
When Cisco ships a replacement part under smartnet (service contract) or via a partner it comes looking for the part that was to be replaced. Normally I believe the limit is 30 days and then Cisco will look to charge the customer for the part.
How this guy could think that no one would come looking for all of this is fairly surprising.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Hey now. Traders do just that, they trade. They don't steal and fence. ;)
I'm sorry for insulting fences and thieves by comparing them with traders.
You do realize, *everyone* is a trader, right ? Even the kid slinging burgers at the local fast food joint is a trade. He trades time for money.
You seem to hate market traders for some reason. Could it be that you lack the basic knowledge and intelligence needed to invest wisely?
Go back to watching "Dancing with the Stars" on that nice TV you bought in that installment plan. That's as close you should get to the financial system, it takes more brains than you have to play this game...
Mark Faris got busted for almost the exact same fraud in 2002. He's now teaching ethics courses (http://www.mpvethics.com/), so it's official: karma has completely given up on the universe and packed it in.
The teenage fry-cook is a 'trader' in roughly the same sense that a Private E-1 is a 'military contractor'...
Not strictly false; but not terribly usefully true.
The kid slinging burgers is performing a job and actually doing something. The trader is just a leach.
Well, if I didn't comprehend that the customers of the fast food joint, weren't purchasing the food and eating it voluntarily, I could accuse the kid working behind the counter of being a mass murderer by way of providing poison that kills people.
But I happen to understand the benefits traders provide to society with their activity, as well as the benefits the kid at the burger joint provides to society by his activity, which is exactly why both securities trading and burger slinging are legal occupations.
So, he stole 1 router?
He trades HIS time for money. The value of his time is dictated to him by his employer, because he has no bargaining power, and his employers fight dirty to prevent any collective bargaining power accumulating in the form of a union, but at least it's his time, an honest trade of a real commodity.
Traders trade other peoples money. They dictate the value of stocks, and currencies. The very definition of the stock market is an instrument that defines the value of companies, and the traders play it for all they can get. By playing their games, they can make the cash value of something plummet, even though it's intrinsic value never changed, buy it for cents on the dollar, and reap the difference as profits. By inserting themselves as a kind of proxy in the loop via high frequency trading, they can squeeze even more out. They hire math PhDs specifically for their ability to invent financial instruments that are too complex to understand, so they can't be taxed or monitored.
Traders will freely admit they don't give a shit about any of the claimed positive effects that the market has. It is not some noble calling, providing liquidity and a fair valuation of your business. It's a racket. The first thing Wall Street thought after the planes hit the Twin Towers, after "Whoa!", was "Whoa, the price of gold must be skyrocketing." The first thing they think when war breaks out is "How can I get me some of that action?"
I've no problem with honest trade, until something better comes along. But Wall Street and the LSX have very little to do with honest trade.
Now thats some fine company thinking. Screw em all. Get what you can while you can.
CEO's everywhere must be proud. Except of course at verizion.
Trader is a leach? Do you know at least 400 people you can sell a stock to? Traders inflate and deflate the price of a security just by that very fact. Creating a buyers market for something increases the value of said thing.
But I take it you dont like the fees and they should do their job for free. How about this I have a house I want painted could you swing by and do it for me oh and pick up some paint while your at it. My wife has a few colors picked out so check with her first.
Wrong
There have been numerous studies done which show there is little relationship between wage paid and work done. Wages only influences the retention of your trained workforce (less wages, more training budget) when they switch to a more profitable job (in a bad economy, wage goes down and productivity up).
Put it another way. Take your average production line employee and double his pay. Does production increase any? No. Production is limited by outside factors (order received, assembly time, work flow from other members, waiting for results to be generated...) However that person may feel better, but as a company I really don't care how that employee feels (yes I know this isn't PC but it is real). Why should I then increase a person's wage?
Take another example. A company in the U.S. competes against a company outside of the U.S. Suppose that there is a extreme difference in labor costs between these two countries/companies. As a result the price for the finished product is much lower when produced in the company outside of the U.S. Which one will the consumer buy? (Hint, take a look at where your car/computer/clothing etc was assembled/built). High (or increasing) wages are counter-productive.
But this magically becomes untrue when it comes to set the salary of managers.
Traders trade other peoples money.
They only trade their own money OR the money of other people who have given it to them voluntarily to trade. This is no different than you giving your daughter money to help buy a house.
They dictate the value of stocks, and currencies.
Absolutely false. The market as a whole determines the value of stocks and currencies, via standard accepted accounting practices. A used car dealer doesn't dictate the value of his cars, the market determines that.
The very definition of the stock market is an instrument that defines the value of companies, and the traders play it for all they can get.
No. The definition of the stock market, is the environment in which stocks are traded. It doesn't "define" the value of companies by itself. The markets perception of the value of a company AS WELL AS the companies actual performance determines value. As for traders being competitive, yes they are, as is any other business person, as is any other sports team member, as is any other politician, etc etc etc. Lifeforms compete for resources and this is not unique to securities traders.
By playing their games, they can make the cash value of something plummet, even though it's intrinsic value never changed, buy it for cents on the dollar, and reap the difference as profits.
If by playing games, you mean, using mathematics and timing, that is no different than any other company does, in order to insure efficient operations. As for market manipulation by any single participant, please go do some research. You will find there are multiple mechanisms in place that prevent market manipulation, and with the exception of fraud or other illegal activities, traders do not cause prices to plummet. They do profit, if they enter a position, with the expectation that the price of something will rise or fall. But it is the overall market, ie, the environment in which one chooses to own a thing or not, that causes prices to rise and fall.
By inserting themselves as a kind of proxy in the loop via high frequency trading, they can squeeze even more out.
This is absolutely not true. As much as we've all read fantastical articles on wired.com about high frequency trading using supercomputers to siphon off profits, trading does not work that way. Every trade is a transaction between a buyer, and a seller. It is a mutual agreement between 2 parties. If you detest mutual agreements between two parties, I suggest you try to make it through life without participating in such transactions yourself. You would surely starve. HF is a near zero sum game between HF traders, and has little effect on long term investors of the health of a company. In the short term, it increases liquidity, which is a good thing, and everyone benefits from it. The only major risk factor in HF trading is the size of the positions that are allowed to be traded via algorithmic platforms, which can easily be limited via simple legislation.
They hire math PhDs specifically for their ability to invent financial instruments that are too complex to understand, so they can't be taxed or monitored.
This is pure newspaper fodder. Certainly the average person, like yourself, who doesn't study complex financial instruments has little chance of understanding them, at the same time, you aren't in the business of trading them. Car manufacturers hire PhDs to help manufacture cars, because the public just wants to drive them. The public doesn't understand how they are manufactured, but receives benefit from the activity anyway.
FYI. Financial instruments are taxed, and monitored. The current state of the tax code is such that there are millions of loopholes, which can be legally used to reduce ones tax burden. If you think the loopholes should be closed, then by all means, call
Seems like a regular scam undertaken by dodgy engineers of all types. Given it's such a common scam, why can't we stop this occuring so often across so many different practices?
No, what I believe he means is that the "inflate and deflate" that the trader can do is worthless to society. It adds no real property or value to society, it only transfers value from one person to another. That's the leach part, the part that derivative traders maximized to harm the housing market (I won't say crash because that implies that mortgoage brokers and customers were free of fault, which they certainly were not.)
seg fault
Except on a macro scale is does matter. Jobs and production aren't created by corporations. They're created by demand: corporations are merely a facilitator, and assuming a healthy economy/society and non-monopolized market segment, new startups will pop up as necessary. Demand is created by the people doing the demanding. If money isn't in the hands of potential buyers, but is instead stashed away in bank accounts that high finance leverages into a global game of russian roulette, then demand drops and jobs and production drop right after.
Manager turnover can have a much higher cost if it disrupts all the employees working for that manager. The GPs logic still holds true. A higher paid manager won't work any harder, long term, but he will be less likely to look for another job.
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Cut his wage in half and see what that does for your productivity and workforce retention.
It is simple theft, indistinguishable from so many other thefts. Just because the stealee is Verizon and the stolen is techie parts, it does not make it is any more interesting than other forms of embezzlement.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm working for Verizon (Business, not Wireless), but I would like to know which process did he used to order the devices. When I have to order legitimate devices or training, it's always a highly complex process that must be validated by up to ten people including one vice-president, checked by auditors in different countries and must be exactly filled otherwise will be rejected (in one of the last steps of course)... a nightmare and really time consuming ! So I'm really impressed by what he did !