Former Netflix IT Executive Convicted of Fraud and Taking Bribes (justice.gov) 24
Business Insider reports:
Former Netflix vice president of IT Michael Kail was convicted by a federal jury on Friday of 28 counts of fraud and money laundering, the U.S. Department of Justice announced in a press release.
Kail, who was indicted in 2018, used his position to create a "pay-to-play" scheme where he approved contracts with outside tech companies looking to do business with Netflix in exchange for taking bribes and kickbacks, according to evidence presented to the jury, the release said. Kail accepted bribes or kickbacks from nine different companies totaling more than $500,000 as well as stock options, according to the Department of Justice's press release...
Netflix sued Kail after he left the company in 2014 to take a role as Yahoo's CIO, accusing him of fraud and breaching his fiduciary duties.
One FBI agent says that Kail "stole the opportunity to work with an industry pioneer from honest, hardworking, Silicon Valley companies," according to the details in the Department of Justice statement: To facilitate kickback payments, the evidence at trial showed that Kail created and controlled a limited liability corporation called Unix Mercenary, LLC. Established on February 7, 2012, Unix Mercenary had no employees and no business location. Kail was the sole signatory to its bank accounts...
Kail faces a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or twice his gross gain or twice the gross loss to Netflix, whichever is greater, for each count of a wire or mail fraud conviction, and ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for each count of a money laundering conviction.
Kail, who was indicted in 2018, used his position to create a "pay-to-play" scheme where he approved contracts with outside tech companies looking to do business with Netflix in exchange for taking bribes and kickbacks, according to evidence presented to the jury, the release said. Kail accepted bribes or kickbacks from nine different companies totaling more than $500,000 as well as stock options, according to the Department of Justice's press release...
Netflix sued Kail after he left the company in 2014 to take a role as Yahoo's CIO, accusing him of fraud and breaching his fiduciary duties.
One FBI agent says that Kail "stole the opportunity to work with an industry pioneer from honest, hardworking, Silicon Valley companies," according to the details in the Department of Justice statement: To facilitate kickback payments, the evidence at trial showed that Kail created and controlled a limited liability corporation called Unix Mercenary, LLC. Established on February 7, 2012, Unix Mercenary had no employees and no business location. Kail was the sole signatory to its bank accounts...
Kail faces a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or twice his gross gain or twice the gross loss to Netflix, whichever is greater, for each count of a wire or mail fraud conviction, and ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for each count of a money laundering conviction.
Executive boards may contain unusually high... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Executive boards may contain unusually high... (Score:2)
1% for what society? Because it it definitly higher in America, amd averaging it out makes it useless.
Re:Executive boards may contain unusually high... (Score:4, Informative)
That's one way to look at it, the other is that normal people just don't like the kind of crazy politics, backstabbing, competition, etc. that those kinds of jobs demand. In big companies, it's quite common to have multiple large departments that are competing with one another or who are doing similar work. From a company point of view, the waste doesn't matter, as they'll just play games with resource constraints and let whichever department ultimately emerges to win while having a solution ready regardless of whichever contingency they may be facing. To run an organization like that, you spend more time trying to defend yourself internally than you do actually doing whatever it is you are actually meant to be doing. Case in point, I took my first vacation in several years at one point - I was running an R&D department of around 250 people at the time, and ended up having large parts of my various departments and staff dismantled/transferred by the time I got back. In the end, I was able to find evidence of financial and labour law violations by one of my direct bosses who let it happen, turned this evidence over to the state prosecutor, and had him deported. I was then offered his job, overseeing about 1000 people. Other department heads had different strategies, like if they knew they were being ranked with stacked ranking, it didn't matter how well they did, it only mattered if someone else did worse than them so they avoided the chopping block. So you would literally have departments that committed all of their resources to trying to cut down another department, without doing anything useful the rest of the time. I can assure you that there are no sane people that end up in these positions, and as long as the company keeps growing and profits are still on the rise, why change? In the end, I just walked away and started my own company.
Poe principle. (Score:5, Funny)
One FBI agent says that Kail "stole the opportunity to work with an industry pioneer from honest, hardworking, Silicon Valley companies," according to the details in the Department of Justice statement:
Said with a straight face too.
Re: Poe principle. (Score:3)
I could literally see the single huge glued-on crocodile tear made from transparent hot glue, on whatever Netflix CEO's face. ;)
Which companies bribed him? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is there nothing about them being arrested/charged etc?
What was the fee? (Score:2)
How much in kickbacks does it take to have a Pedro Almodovar movie on Netflix?
Chiseling little crook (Score:1)
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Idea for a film (Score:2)
Wait, I don't get the problem for Americans here.. (Score:1)
I thought doing such things was considered just normal business in America.
I mean it's "just" making a profit the way literally every profit ever is made: By tricking or blackmailing somebody who does not have a choice but to pay more than it would cost in a perfectly balanced market.
I mean any seller at a market will sell his last oranges to whoever pays him the most. ("pay to win"?)
Is it the monopolism aspect? Because it's not like he's a government official who can't take bribes.
Is his employer imposing
Re: (Score:2)
I thought doing such things was considered just normal business in America.
I mean it's "just" making a profit the way literally every profit ever is made: By tricking or blackmailing somebody who does not have a choice but to pay more than it would cost in a perfectly balanced market.
I mean any seller at a market will sell his last oranges to whoever pays him the most. ("pay to win"?)
Is it the monopolism aspect? Because it's not like he's a government official who can't take bribes.
Is his employer imposing some kind of monopolism? So is he "not allowed" to do any other work or have any other business than for them? Like, is it because it was not *Netflix" doing the pay-to-win blackmailing, aka profiteering, like normal?
Twenty years? Thst is whar you get for *murder* over here. I don't get it... For what exactly? ... but I'm asking in the context of *American* societal rules. After turning on my brain and actually thinking about it, I'm stumped.
Everyone probably knows by now that I myself strongly oppose any type of profit making whatsoever, and know it is equal to theft or robbery,
Obviously you haven't sat through the yearly mandatory Corporate Ethics and Compliance videos, with a web test after.
That being said, CIO of Yahoo? There will be plenty of opportunities to milk that particular dead cow...
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20 years is the maximum sentence, there is no way he's getting that. It wouldn't surprise me if he got off with less than a year of actual jail time. (Meanwhile normal people might sit in jail for over a year just waiting for their trial to start, and are going to get charged with laws that define a "mandatory minimum sentence", which none of these financial crimes do.)
As far as the reason for charging him, he got more than someone ranked above him wanted him to. Probably the CEO, the living embodiment of t
Re: (Score:3)
Generally speaking MOST employers I've worked for at least the past 15 years have explicit anti-corruption policies... Things like bribing suppliers, customers or government officials. Also soliciting/accepting bribes from same.
And they make everyone undergo annual training on the policies and "pledge" to uphold those policies on pain of termination. Just knowing it's going on and not reporting it can be grounds for termination.
It's done in support fo federal laws that make all of those activities individu
Re: Wait, I don't get the problem for Americans he (Score:1)
You oppose any profit making whatsoever because it is akin to theft....? So how do you suppose anyone is able to serve someone else and... live? As a man with multiple surgeries as a child, including back surgeries, and thankful for the work I have now doing construction I can't understand why you'd want to take making people's homes and environments better, away from me. They NEED the work done and I do it and they pay me. We both profit. What is the issue?
solution (Score:1)
I'm tired of pretending like we don't already know the solution to widespread fraud: if people engaged in fraud are publicly executed (along with their pets), there won't be a fraud problem anymore.
This should apply to business, politics, sweepstakes, anything, you name it. It would be unconscionable to even think about opening one's self up to public painful torture, humiliation and death. And everyone would verify each other's compliance because no one wants to see pets be executed.
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So whats the problem? (Score:2)
So whats the problem? I mean, how is this any different than business as usual in Washington DC? https://www.opensecrets.org/do... [opensecrets.org]
subject (Score:1)