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CEO of Defunct Silicon Valley Startup Indicted For Allegedly Tricking Employees Into Working For Free (theregister.co.uk)
The founder and CEO of a shuttered Silicon Valley startup has been indicted for tricking employees into working without pay and for lying about his credentials and financing. From a report: In an indictment unsealed this week, Isaac Choi, founder and CEO of failed Silicon Valley job search startup WrkRiot, was charged with five counts of wire fraud for allegedly defrauding former employees. Problems at the upstart surfaced in August when Penny Kim, former head of marketing for the company, published an account of her experience at an unnamed biz. She said the unspecified outfit failed to pay her and forged wire transfer confirmations to make it appear it had transferred owed funds. After it emerged that Kim was talking about WrkRiot, the company threatened legal action. By the end of August, when former CTO Al Brown acknowledged being the person referred to as "Charlie" in Kim's post and corroborated her claims, WrkRiot had shut down its website and Facebook page.
Tom Sawyer?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I hate when they do this stuff. Forging a wire transfer is NOT 'tricking you into working for free'. Instead it is tricking people into thinking they were paid. Or more accurately: Wire Fraud against their own employees.
Tricking someone into working for free would mean the employee had to have done something stupid like accepting a bet on a coin flip that turned out to be a two headed coin.
What person felt the need to downgrade the horrible crime of wire fraud into merely 'tricking'?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
disrupting "work" and "compensation"!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
open a start-up in tim cocks stupid ass, then wire transfer billions of defrauded offshore funds back to pay salaries to homeless engineers
Come on. It is a free society with full freedom of expression. Lying is his fundamental right, and he exercised it. If his employees were foolish enough to believe his lies, it is their fault right? Why should he be indicted? You don't see Trump supporters suing Trump for lying. What's good enough for Trumpsters is good enough for techies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Once upon a time we had honest companies and corporations.. The end. - No,. I really mean it!.. The end!! That's the whole story!
I dare you to find a CEO who DOESN'T trick (or just demand) his employees to work for free in the form of unpaid overtime.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
The moment it looks like my paycheck won't come through I'll start looking for a new job in a heartbeat. Most of the time it's either someone screwing up payroll in HR or the HR vendor having an electronic glitch. Incidents like that are usually resolved in 24 hours. One time I had a check sent via FedEx. I don't work for free.
The crime he committed was wire fraud against his employees. I believe that we're all hoping they give this Isaac Choi fellow each and every moment he's earned in prison.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I suppose you could be tricked into working for free for about a month, assuming you get paid monthly (which I'd never do at a startup, two weeks max). As soon as payday comes and the money is not in your account, I'd be staying at home and sending out resumes until I get paid or find another job (probably the latter regardless).
Let me know when he's convicted and sent to the pokey. And has to pay the employees he defrauded.
Toward the end of the last dotcom bubble, you'd see stories similar to this, where the founder was able to keep their employees working even after the money was gone. I would imagine this happens a lot during the death stage in lots of small businesses. From what I've seen, the difference between tech startups and your average small businesses is that some of the employees become brainwashed to some extent. They've been putting in 100 hour weeks for so long that nothing will convince them that it's time to get out.
I think part of the problem with startups is that the founders are these "serial entrepreneur" types who (a) have difficulty dealing with actual employees, and (b) have a huge personal financial cushion to fall back on and therefore have no idea how bad not getting a paycheck can be for "normal" people. Larger companies may move slowly and have dumb rules and a bureaucracy, but most large companies don't make it a regular habit of shorting employees' wages. Startup founders are a lot more likely to say "Oh well, I guess it's time to close up...time to chase that "Uber for nurses" opportunity!" and forget about who they're leaving behind.
I disagree with you more often than not. I probably don't like you much either. However, I have noticed a lot of people trolling you, and you have generally responded in more or less civil terms. I'm not sure I would respond as well in the same circumstances. Do keep ignoring any AC suggestions to stop posting, you're okay in my book.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.