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Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors

justice.gov

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Re: Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors

#311

Post by lern_too_spel »

bpodgursky wrote: post #90
lern_too_spel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The journalist got it wrong. The startups weren't victims. They were clearly complicit in the crime. They could have very easily reported the bribery scheme to the Netflix board and gotten him fired, but they took the contract instead. The DOJ claimed that the people at Netflix who used the services assumed they were evaluating the services and not paying for them. There are many better articles about this story from…

> “The startups that paid to play, and possibly many others, believed this was how Netflix did business,” the prosecutors said. You're actually accusing the prosecutor of getting it wrong... which seems a bit arrogant.

The prosecutors were making a case against Kail. If they make it seem like the startups were complicit or even proposed it, that would hurt their case against Kail.

These arrangements were obviously illegal, and it beggars belief to suggest that so many startups were unaware of that.

Re: Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors

#312

Post by bogwog »

Phillip98798 wrote: post #231
bogwog wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if it was only a fine: say, 90% of all your money/assets. That sounds like a crazy gamble, but people gamble money all the time. Lots of people would be willing to take that risk. But prison time scares everybody. You can't get those years back, no matter how wealthy you are.

I hear that. I just wonder what exactly it is we're accomplishing here in terms of justice. More corporate compliance and fear? Where is the line going to be drawn? Hyperbolic perhaps, but what's to stop the law from going after salaried people with side projects? Oh, you visited the stackoverflow career page during your 9-5? That's fraud. I'm exaggerating, but the precedent is there. Cases like this can create a sli…

> Oh, you visited the stackoverflow career page during your 9-5? That's fraud. I'm exaggerating

So you're saying that what this guy did isn't clearly fraud? I don't see how you could say that, unless you misunderstood the situation. It is, very clearly, 100% fraud.

In addition to the money Netflix was paying him as part of his salary, he was also secretly taking a cut of the money flowing to contractors.

It's like when a government sends aid money to another government after a natural disaster, but all the corrupt officials steal it so that eventually there's very little left for the original purpose.

Re: Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors

#313

Post by ncmncm »

smsm42 wrote: post #219
paulpauper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is less political corruption in the US than people think. Everything is so scrutinized these days, especially compared to the rest of the world. White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu's travel expenses scandal was a big deal at the time, and this was in 1992 (before social media) and the amount of $ was pretty small. I think insider trading is possible concern though, although that too has gotten considerabl…

Sununu case was more about politics than corruption per se. He was living large on government expense account, with some things coming straight like "obnoxious rich guy flaunting his wealth" caricatures. He also was never prosecuted, only fired - because he became a political liability. So I think claim that "there is less political corruption in the US than people think" is going way too far. Most of the corruption…

In the US, corruption at high-enough levels has been explicitly legalized. US now leads the world in legalized corruption.

Russia would like to lead, but doesn't handle enough money.

In China it is still technically not legal. So, if you always do as you are told by the Party, you will not be prosecuted. Step out of line, and boom!

I don't know of any way to get back to corruption being illegal, even neglecting prosecution like in the old days.

Re: Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors

#314

Post by pacoWebConsult »

jacquesm wrote: post #282
pacoWebConsult wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waiting for the dang smackdown reply to this comment. You posted a secondary source (typically these get redirected to the primary source for any story), and used the editorialized title from the original journalist as your post title. Pretty commonplace on HN to correct these things so we can discuss the facts, not the reductive analysis of what someone writes about the primary source.

OP has a stake in the company whose link was posted, so it goes a bit deeper than that. That particular source had already been flagged as problematic taking the number of 'dead' links into account. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=businessofbusiness.co... and https://twitter.com/thebizofbiz/status/1450491847739068420 Where they make a lot of hay on being #1 with a story on HN.

Even worse than I thought. OP should probably get a warning if not ban that site outright. Especially since they're clearly attempting to astroturf HN.

Re: Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors

#315

Post by pvg »

ugwigr wrote: post #309
tptacek wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN's UX here is good. Stories are community property; they do not belong to the person who submits them. It's a basic rule of the site, and a very good one.

The community should know when the content is materially altered.

That's exactly the purpose of the moderator comment, as people pointed out near the start of all this.

Re: Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors

#316

Post by omarhaneef »

gimmeThaBeet wrote: post #302
omarhaneef wrote: post #65

One item seems to have caused a lot of confusion in the comments so I will take a stab at clarifying: It is perfectly legal for Netflix to ask for options or any other consideration in exchange for the contract. Companies do this sort of thing frequently. They know that merely signing a large contract with a large firm will increase the value of the contractor. It is not legal for someone working for Netflix to ask f…

It reminds me of Matt Levine's insider trading, saying(? I don't think it's one of the laws). "It's not about fairness, it's about theft" Which was also applicable to that college admissions thing. The problem is not that people were buying their way into schools. It's that they were paying someone other than the school to do so. The situation as a whole feels a bit dodgy, but the core legal problem is the guy took s…

yes, both of those parallels came to mind as I was writing. You're exactly right, from my perspective, in underscoring the similarity.

Once you have that basic model then all the rest of the variations: the company can allow it etc fall out of the model.

Re: Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors

#317

Post by deathhand »

Ctrl + F "Biden", no results. That's so sad! It's the same thing Hunter did, and Hillary has been accused of. I like the morality that is seen in this thread but can we take it a bit further? FDA is mentioned a few times. What about the FTC? Ajit and net neutrality? It's everywhere!

Re: Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors

#318

Post by ksdale »

loopercal wrote: post #277
ksdale wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I think the number of people who know and don't care is a small fraction of the people who honestly don't understand that they're doing something wrong. I mean, obviously this guy knew he was doing something wrong, but a lot of people just can't imagine that their own unethical behavior wouldn't be obvious to them.

I think a lot of people feel "clever" and like what they're doing is, while not expressly allowed, not forbidden either. See a bunch of people in this thread finding out they're probably committing tax fraud by underpaying themselves from their own s-corp to dodge taxes.

Haha I do taxes for a living, and the number of times people have said, "My buddy does this and he says it's fine." As if the fact that the person hasn't been caught is evidence that what they're doing is legal. It's what you mentioned, they feel clever and don't think they're doing anything illegal.

Re: Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors

#319

Post by ransom1538 »

tptacek wrote: post #43

The DOJ press release is clearer than this article is: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executiv... Some fun details: Kail did his criming through a shell LLC he set up called "Unix Mercenary". He took between 10-15% of the total billings for each of the companies he hooked up with this scheme. None of those companies were charged (more's the pity). They got him on mail fraud, wire fraud, honest se…

Is there any gray here? Example: you continue a contract with NewRelic and they buy you a fancy dinner at a michelin restaurant. You go with Splunk and they buy you a vacation in Hawaii to talk things 'over'. Seems like if you aren't taking cash - things can get gray real fast.

Re: Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors

#320

Post by ransom1538 »

tptacek wrote: post #8
earthscienceman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some feedback from an outsider: IMO you do a poor job clearly outlining the transgressions and the legal issues at play. You bounce around phrases like "pay-to-play"but as someone not inside the startup world, I didn't get to the end of your article and understand exactly what he did that was illegal/immoral and the context for how it's harmful to startups. In other words, I know he is accused of doing something wron…

The article describes an absolutely standard kickback scheme. If you're an employee of a company and arrange to take kickbacks from vendors without the approval of your employer, you're defrauding your employer.

Eh. "you're defrauding your employer." - that gets into an opinion. There isn't a law for that. Like the FEDS tend to do -- they got real creative with "mail fraud" and "wire fraud". I was surprised to not see "racketeering" for the FEDS bs trifecta. Their money laundering charge I would say is 100% bs: creating an LLC isn't laundering -- but who cares! the jury wont understand anything.
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