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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

#181

Post by stefan_ »

ghaff wrote: post #145
vishnugupta wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of people who AWS fully sponsored, including business class intercontinental travel, to attend re:Invent which is essentially a week long holiday party, by virtue of AWS bill. Every vendor has marketing budget and a decent portion of it goes to keeping their point people at clients happy. You can call it kick back or whatever, it’s a matter of semantics. So yes it is normal. And no it’s neither cynical and nor…

While normal business travel can have a bit of a boondoggle aspect to it (and your example would probably not be OK for US government employees), it's not generally considered a personal payment or gift as a kickback would be. So, no, it's not the same thing in the manner that paying for someone's personal vacation week on a tropical island would be. Companies pick up at least some expenses for customers, partners, j…

There is no magic loophole by giving people stuff rather than paying them money directly. In tax law this is just called a non-cash benefit and it is taxable all the same. I'm sure the people writing corruption guidelines had the same insight.

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

#182

Post by bellyfullofbac »

stefan_ wrote: post #174
vishnugupta wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of people who AWS fully sponsored, including business class intercontinental travel, to attend re:Invent which is essentially a week long holiday party, by virtue of AWS bill. Every vendor has marketing budget and a decent portion of it goes to keeping their point people at clients happy. You can call it kick back or whatever, it’s a matter of semantics. So yes it is normal. And no it’s neither cynical and nor…

It's all fun and games until you swap AWS for Purdue Pharma and point people for doctors and suddenly there is an opium addiction epidemic. This shit has real consequences.

I guess at least the courts are there to fix things... except when it's also okay for members of the highest court of the land to get sponsored golf/hunting trips, and even be caught dead in one...

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

#183

Post by PragmaticPulp »

jimkleiber wrote: post #170
coldtea wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wide…

I guess for me it comes down to numbers. What does "fairly widespread" equate to? 50% of American corporate executives do this? 10%? 1%? Or are we talking about global executives at firms that net over $1B revenue per year? It may seem nitpicky and yet I think the context and statistics matter—without it, I think we can fall into very binary discussions of people being corrupt or clean, bad or good.

> I guess for me it comes down to numbers. What does "fairly widespread" equate to?

Exactly. It's easy to search the internet internet for 10+ news stories about just about any bad behavior over the past decade, but that doesn't make it the norm.

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

#184

Post by gunshai »

horsawlarway wrote: post #128
pyronite wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any laws I've unintentionally broken. Which kinds of laws are you speaking of?

Ever been under 18 and owned a spray paint can or a permanent marker? Crime. Ever connected to an open wifi network without directly confirming with the owner you're allowed? Crime. Ever held your phone while driving? Crime. Happen to also be headed downhill and hit 1mph over the limit? Double crime! Ever walked across your street outside of clearly marked crossings? Crime. Ever sung happy birthday in public? Crime.…

This read like straight out of a Legal Eagle Youtube video.

I think this is like the exact list in a recent video of his. Great channel by the way if people are unfamiliar

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

#185

Post by duffpkg »

lordnacho wrote: post #143
duffpkg wrote: post #83

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 institution…

Did people ask you for bribes, did you say no, did you miss the hints, or did you just not know that you needed to do this?

After losing some deals that just seemed like there was no credible way we could lose, better "product", better price, better team, etc. You start asking hard questions about all the people involved and eventually someome will confidentially explain what happened. Especially people who actually need to work with the worse vendor that just got selected.

If you read through the settlement I linked ("The settlement also resolves allegations that ECW paid kickbacks to certain customers in exchange for promoting its product.") and other documentation regarding that case you can find details of several situations. I am singling out ECW there because that settlement exists. You would have to be pretty naive to think they were the only vendor engaged in that type of behavior and that the recipients of kick backs were only receiving kick backs from them alone.

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

#186

Post by lowkey_ »

0x0nyandesu wrote: post #74
lowkey_ wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the spot/contract/etc in that case, that the professor is selling but doesn't have the right to sell on behalf of the university for his own enrichment? I don't see an example of how the university is losing revenue and being defrauded in that scenario.

The student is being defrauded. They signed up for something that was supposed to cost x but instead it costs y. Their degree being in jeopardy makes it blackmail from my perspective. It's telling that you were more willing to make sure the university wasn't being defrauded but I guess the student can kick rocks right?

No, what I was trying to initially explain is that it is Netflix being defrauded. You pointed out that the company may only have equity to give, and I said that they weren't giving the equity to Netflix. They were giving it to an executive at Netflix in exchange for a contract, and it wasn't the executive's right to give that contract spot away for his own enrichment, because it's not his spot to give.

Similarly, in the case of college admissions scandals, it is the college being defrauded.

Now here, to make a parallel as you were intending, we'd have to see how the university is being defrauded.

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

#187

Post by DFHippie »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #126
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…

More to the point, virtually every senior member of Presidential administrations do this almost blatantly, big-D or big-R, doesn't matter. This was hundreds of thousands. Those are billions. What's the difference? The person who got caught was a small fry and couldn't pull the strings.

> More to the point, virtually every senior member of Presidential administrations do this almost blatantly, big-D or big-R, doesn't matter.

This is the sort of cynical thing people say because other people say it. Spiro Agnew did it, sure. That was a while ago. What are your other examples? Since virtually every member does this, you should have hundreds. And remember you need a roughly balanced count of Republicans and Democrats. Obama was in office for 8 years. That should be quite a pile.

Pure cynicism is an argument against rules and accountability generally.

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

#188

Post by ghaff »

stefan_ wrote: post #181
ghaff wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While normal business travel can have a bit of a boondoggle aspect to it (and your example would probably not be OK for US government employees), it's not generally considered a personal payment or gift as a kickback would be. So, no, it's not the same thing in the manner that paying for someone's personal vacation week on a tropical island would be. Companies pick up at least some expenses for customers, partners, j…

There is no magic loophole by giving people stuff rather than paying them money directly. In tax law this is just called a non-cash benefit and it is taxable all the same. I'm sure the people writing corruption guidelines had the same insight.

The "loophole" is that, for gifts of more than a token amount, it has to be a legitimate business expense--whoever is picking up the bill. Waiving a conference fee and covering some or all of the travel expenses to a conference, would widely be considered legitimate business expenses. Normally these would be picked up by my company these days if I had a business reason to attend an event and I need to pay for registration and travel. But conference organizers routinely waive at least the conference fees for journalists, analysts, speakers, and possibly others they want to attend.

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

#189

Post by moralestapia »

DangitBobby wrote: post #171
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know of people who AWS fully sponsored, including business class intercontinental travel, to attend re:Invent which is essentially a week long holiday party, by virtue of AWS bill. Flying people to an AWS conference seems entirely different than funneling money into a single person's bank account. Yes, I know these conferences have a party-like atmosphere, but it's not done surreptitiously and it's not siphoning…

It doesn't really seem that different.

It is VERY different, come on.

It's an open conference offered by the largest player in the space vs. a shady deal between a supplier and ONE person of another company, without its employers consent, on top of that.

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

#190

Post by avgcorrection »

vmception wrote: post #43
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…

or not trying to normalize but pointing out that its already normalized to the point that you can’t be an effective employee due to competition with people winning deal flow via kickbacks The actions in question occurred almost 10 years ago, how many people lost commissions and bonuses and promotions and jobs and relationships by trying to play fair? acknowledging this isn’t being an apologist for it or condoning it…

How do you propose that one solves this?
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