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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
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.
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.
I know very few people on ./ RTFA, but you should at least read the summary. The company forged confirmation of wire transfers that never occurred. It was not a case of the company convincing people to work for free (a la Tom Sawyer).
Lying to employee's about their pay, and cheating them is illegal. Sorry, the asshole should be hanged for screwing hopeful workers over. Short of hanging, which is unlikely, he should get time in maximum security with the rest of the scum.
Possibly between the current age, and the age of the robber barons, but that's debatable.
Oh please. His own deputy press secretary told us just yesterday that she can definitively say the president is not a liar. So no lawsuit.
he should get time in maximum security with the rest of the scum.
Nonsense. Prisons, and especially max-sec prisons, should only be used for violent people that need to be physically separated from civilized society. For everyone else there are more appropriate and constructive alternatives. For instance, this guy could have all his assets seized, and spend 40 hours per week for the next 10 years changing bed pans in a nursing home. That way he will be contributing to society instead of being a burden, and his kids won't grow up in a broken home.
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'd agree with everything you said but would add: Garnish all future wages of his until his payments to the employees are fully paid back with interest. He can keep minimum wage to live off of, but anything more than that goes to a fund that pays back the employees.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Possibly between the current age, and the age of the robber barons, but that's debatable.
No, that is not debatable. That was a time when corporations dumped methylmercury into drinking water supplies, used coerced convict labor, and helped run the death camps of the Holocaust. The is no evidence, none whatsoever, that there was ever a "golden age" of corporate ethics and honesty. If anything, companies are most honest and ethical today, simply because it is harder to hide misdeeds, and the consequences of getting caught are more severe.
Unfortunately, that's a fantasy story. Corporations have always tried to abuse workers to benefit the company/management/executives. That's why unions were born. You might disagree with them today, but their origins were in abused employees who had no leverage against the companies running their lives in and out of work and government that always sided with the companies.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
It's cute that you think stealing another's labor is civilized.
It's a free market issue, the government should keep out of organized crime syndicates as it's bad for these small business owners.
I disagree. I don't want scum like that changing my bedpans or corrupting my shit with his presence.
Well it does fall under the definition of standard business practices.
Did she pinky swear?
So...Trump ignoring his contractual obligations to pay people and then suing them into submission if they argued, after the work was completed, is not the same as this lowlife scum? As a businessman who has been on people trying to skip out on payments and having been on the losing end of a "bankruptcy of convenience" I say bullshit. Lock. Them. Up.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
What you are saying is right. But President Reagan had put a big start in disassembling Unions. We are down to lest than 10% and a lot of blood was shed to make these unions. The Haymarket Riot used bombs and that gave them a reason to strike back. http://www.history.com/topics/...
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.