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Netflix Executive Sentenced to 30 Months for 700K Bribes, Kickbacks from Vendors

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Re: Netflix Executive Sentenced to 30 Months for 700K Bribes, Kickbacks from Vendors

#81

Post by codegeek »

notch656a wrote: post #57
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #13

Every time this story comes up, the comments are filled with people proclaiming that kickbacks like this are totally normal and very common. I can't tell how much of it is random people projecting their cynicism onto the business world, or if it's people who have been part of bribery/kickback schemes themselves trying to normalize the behavior online. Either way, cases like this should make it clear that the behavior…

The average American may earn something like 125k in 30 months. 700k in exchange for a small chance of 30 months in jail probably sounds like a good deal to a purely rational and amoral person.

Except that he has to return the 700k, Pay additional fine of 50K , go to Jail for 30 months and not to mention that his reputation is ruined and he will never get another high profile white collar job. Yea, totally worth it.

Re: Netflix Executive Sentenced to 30 Months for 700K Bribes, Kickbacks from Vendors

#82

Post by 0x0nyandesu »

humanistbot wrote: post #60
0x0nyandesu wrote: post #28

Why is this even illegal? Perks in the industry is normal. People are always trying to get their own businesses front and center for contracts. Some of these companies just don't have much to give out other than equity and what exactly is wrong about that?

Officially, the crime is fraud and the victim is Netflix, Inc. He defrauded the other employees and the corporate shareholders. He also laundered the money, which is also illegal and why the IRS got involved. Kickbacks aren't the fundamental issue here. If this was a single-employee startup with no other investors or shareholders, this would be perfectly legal. Or if Netflix, Inc. had a policy that authorized individ…

As a Netflix share holder I'm gonna say that this is a cost of doing business in Hollywood. Nothing this exec did is actually a problem. Half these people are at each other's houses ever day fucking each other's wives at swinger parties.

Re: Netflix Executive Sentenced to 30 Months for 700K Bribes, Kickbacks from Vendors

#83

Post by duffpkg »

I created a company around an Open Source Electronic Medical Records system I also created, ClearHealth. It took me a couple of years to realize we were losing deals for health systems not because our system was bad (it was great), not because our sales teams were bad (they were great) but because we weren't engaging in kick-backs and outright bribery. This has become such a normalized part of business at institutions that it is extremely hard to be competitive if you don't do it.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/electronic-health-records-ven...

Re: Netflix Executive Sentenced to 30 Months for 700K Bribes, Kickbacks from Vendors

#84

Post by coldtea »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #13

Every time this story comes up, the comments are filled with people proclaiming that kickbacks like this are totally normal and very common. I can't tell how much of it is random people projecting their cynicism onto the business world, or if it's people who have been part of bribery/kickback schemes themselves trying to normalize the behavior online. Either way, cases like this should make it clear that the behavior…

>I can't tell how much of it is random people projecting their cynicism onto the business world, or if it's people who have been part of bribery/kickback schemes themselves trying to normalize the behavior online.

Or people who actually know about those things, having worked in/with/studied the various industries, without having "been part of bribery/kickback schemes themselves", and have seen them to be fairly widespread - that's a missing third option.

I added this, because the above comment is still that of the proverbial starry-eyed kid arriving with the bus to L.A. from Nebraska, and paints a false dichotomy that ends up with the same conclusion ("this can't possibly be widespread"):

(a) it's either cynical people (so this isn't widespread, it's just their cynicism that thinks so)

(b) or it's crooks looking to normalize their behavior (so this isn't widespread, it's just isolated "bad-apple" cases justyfing themselves)

Even merely studying different industries, you'll find such scandals (and worse) in some of the biggest companies on Earth, with upper management knowledge and encourangement, collaboration with local governments, cover-up and diplomatic protection from the company's own government, and so on.

Just an example, from one of the biggest companies in the world, with tons of different executives and branches involved, and with different corruption cases all around the world:

https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-263.htm

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-lt-latam-siemens-b...

https://www.reuters.com/article/norway-siemens-idUSL13418322...

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal

How about IBM:

https://medium.com/worm-capital/the-ibm-hall-of-shame-a-semi...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-drops-multi-country-bribery...

https://fortune.com/2017/07/27/ibm-poland-investigation/

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-12793255

Microsoft?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-pay-25m-to-doj-an...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-settlement-idUS...

GE and more:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/fbi-targets-johnson-johnson-...

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/whistleb...

https://www.industryweek.com/the-economy/regulations/article...

A general study focusing on past:

"As the 2000s decade progressed, a different breed of corporate scandals began to surface. For example, companies such as ABB Limited, Daimler Chrysler, El Paso Corporation, General Electric, Halliburton, Lee Dynamics, Lucent Technologies, and Siemens AG were found guilty of violating U.S. law and consequently, also rattled shareholders’ trust (Cascini & DelFavero, 2008, p.27). The named businesses were found guilty of committing bribery (...)"

https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

And we haven't even got into weapons, aviation, construction, and medicine industry bribes (industries which are to bribes what Xerox PARC was for UI innovations!)

Re: Netflix Executive Sentenced to 30 Months for 700K Bribes, Kickbacks from Vendors

#85

Post by leagueoflegends »

parhamn wrote: post #14

Some of the vendors mentioned: - VistaraIT, LLC - Platfora, Inc. - Sumo Logic, Inc - ElasticBox, Inc - Numerify, Inc. - Docurated, Inc - Maginatics, Inc. Is what they did illegal too? Presumably with zero chance of being charged. I haven't fully groked the limits of 'fraud' and 'money laundering' here in the US. These typically feel like they should be civil breach of fiduciary duty type cases.

VistaraIT, LLC renamed itself to OpsRamp to distance themselves from this debacle

Re: Netflix Executive Sentenced to 30 Months for 700K Bribes, Kickbacks from Vendors

#86

Post by everybodyknows »

hpoe wrote: post #8

If you get caught stealing $700,000 you've got a problem. If you get caught stealing $700,000,000 the criminal justice system has a problem.

Bernie Madoff's damage was a few billion, depending on how you count it. Turned out was a problem for him, eventually.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/14/business/bernie-madoff-dead/i...

Re: Netflix Executive Sentenced to 30 Months for 700K Bribes, Kickbacks from Vendors

#87

Post by colejohnson66 »

krapp wrote: post #26
nsgi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN should really increase the max title length, there's plenty of space and the current limit often requires important details to be cut out

But it isn't truly Hacker News unless it's formatted to be read on an 80 column monitor.

With 8 space indents per column for threading as per GNU style?

Re: Netflix Executive Sentenced to 30 Months for 700K Bribes, Kickbacks from Vendors

#89

Post by notch656a »

codegeek wrote: post #81
notch656a wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average American may earn something like 125k in 30 months. 700k in exchange for a small chance of 30 months in jail probably sounds like a good deal to a purely rational and amoral person.

Except that he has to return the 700k, Pay additional fine of 50K , go to Jail for 30 months and not to mention that his reputation is ruined and he will never get another high profile white collar job. Yea, totally worth it.

In retrospect yes. If you can prove the probability he would be caught is low enough, then you could probably show it was worth the risk. I don't know what that probability is, but based on how rare executives are actually nabbed over this sort of thing I'm not so sure we can say with certainty he made a bad bet.

Re: Netflix Executive Sentenced to 30 Months for 700K Bribes, Kickbacks from Vendors

#90

Post by pyb »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #13

Every time this story comes up, the comments are filled with people proclaiming that kickbacks like this are totally normal and very common. I can't tell how much of it is random people projecting their cynicism onto the business world, or if it's people who have been part of bribery/kickback schemes themselves trying to normalize the behavior online. Either way, cases like this should make it clear that the behavior…

This guy was able to extract kickbacks from nine different vendors. So in fact, it looks quite a few companies have systems in place to "facilitate" deals if needed.
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