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Ask HN: Should I inform investors that my startup employer is a scam?

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Re: Ask HN: Should I inform investors that my startup employer is a scam?

#91

You just gave me flashbacks to this dude I contracted for. Dude had me working on utterly random stuff for like less than a week at a time. "Hey, make a visualization tool in Unity!" "uhhh ok but I don't know C#, and the backend is only 10% done, I suggest we focus--" "just do it! we have to move fast!" I eventually started to get roped into investor meetings and he was just straight up lying to investors; nothing wr…

How much did he end up skimping you on?

Re: Ask HN: Should I inform investors that my startup employer is a scam?

#92
post #69

I'm gonna agree with qikInNdOutReply here: you work for a laundromat. If this has happened multiple times, it's entirely possible that all of the VCs involved are aware of it, and are in fact getting their money's worth. :-) Here's my advice to you, and I'm not going to say IANAL because you don't need to be a lawyer to know this: you are working for shady people. If it is, as seems likely, a laundering front, the ve…

The whole point of a laundry is to get money out that has an apparently legitimate source. That isn't happening here.

Re: Ask HN: Should I inform investors that my startup employer is a scam?

#93
post #69

I'm gonna agree with qikInNdOutReply here: you work for a laundromat. If this has happened multiple times, it's entirely possible that all of the VCs involved are aware of it, and are in fact getting their money's worth. :-) Here's my advice to you, and I'm not going to say IANAL because you don't need to be a lawyer to know this: you are working for shady people. If it is, as seems likely, a laundering front, the ve…

The investors are adults who are expected to be able to look out for themselves. VCs, doubly so.

There are probably way more crooked VCs than crooked startups, by volume of money skimmed. Giving investment money to a crooked VC is even dumber than to a crooked startup. I.e., they deserve to be milked. They may cease to invest, after some time.

Re: Ask HN: Should I inform investors that my startup employer is a scam?

#95
A tip (probably best anonymous, but accompanied with some actual, real, confirmable data/documentation) to the IRS would go much further than one to either the investors or the SEC. That goes double if your managment is even slightly MAGA. The literal army of IRS agents coming very soon will be out looking for people to harass and eat the substance our of... (Note that the 87,000 IRS agent increase is several time the agency's total size and the additional $80 billion funded compares to Russia's total military budget of $66B USD!)

Re: Ask HN: Should I inform investors that my startup employer is a scam?

#96

> Ask HN: I have a job making money without being forced to do anything difficult. Please help me figure out how I can fuck up my situation.

On that note, any VC's needing a CEO to start a new company when this guy goes to the feds, HMU.

Re: Ask HN: Should I inform investors that my startup employer is a scam?

#97

> Ask HN: I have a job making money without being forced to do anything difficult. Please help me figure out how I can fuck up my situation.

Plot twist;

He was gonna buy puts on the company stock and make out like a bandit on his way out the door.

Re: Ask HN: Should I inform investors that my startup employer is a scam?

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain? "Money laundering" businesses are cash businesses. If the money is already in the legitimate banking system it doesn't need to be laundered, even if it's from an "oligarch". How does this help? As someone below commented, it seems more likely that the VCs are stealing from their investors.

...They're cash businesses when you're cleaning cash - drugs, prostitution, etc Do you think people are bringing briefcases of cash on the scale of that many millions to a nail salon?

There are other ways of cleaning bulk cash. Buying real estate in developing countries, for instance. I just thought that once the money is in the legit banking system, as it would have to be for a startup to accept it as funding, it's clean enough. I hadn't considered sanctions though.

Re: Ask HN: Should I inform investors that my startup employer is a scam?

#99
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain? "Money laundering" businesses are cash businesses. If the money is already in the legitimate banking system it doesn't need to be laundered, even if it's from an "oligarch". How does this help? As someone below commented, it seems more likely that the VCs are stealing from their investors.

The world is more complex than that. Things like sanctions and countries (not) fully implementing the sanctions create a world in which the transport of sanctioned ‘money’ (or money owned by sanctioned people) from place X to Y is only possible via constructions as the one hinted on here. Dirty money is not always cash. Even bank held funds can be dirty enough to require cleaning.

Good point, thank you for helping me understand.
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