Ex Netflix IT ops boss pocketed $500k+ in bribes before awarding millions in tech contracts Michael Kail, former veep of IT Operations at Netflix, was convicted on Friday on 28 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering after a federal jury found that he took advantage of his position to demand bribes from vendors. "As Netflix’s Vice President of IT Operations, Michael Kail wielded immense power to …
Money breeds corruption, it just does. But the alternative is a barter system, so we're stuck with it.
Swap out people on a regular basis, that's the only way to make sure that if one starts it, then it's found out soon enough. Letting your organization become static is always an ingredient for disaster.
And September 2013, while getting paid as an advisor at Platfora, he signed a $250,000 annual contract to have Platfora provide software to Netflix. He then urged employees to find a use for the software, despite their objections and the fact that Netflix was already using and paying for a competing product.
Anyone who has been in the corporate world long enough knows if you already have a working product, and if you are being pushed to use a competing and inferior product, then there's either money or connections involved.
The real issue here is why wasn't this flagged and caught much earlier? Why wasn't this exposed during an audit? You don't get away with this type of open and obvious fraud unless more executives are involved.
After seeing that it took 3-4 years to catch I was expecting some sort embezzlement mastermind, but after reading I have to agree its insane that he wasn't caught right out the gate. Its not even low-hanging fruit, it already fell off the tree and has been rotting for months.
Not money, *greed*.
The subtle difference is that you can have enough money. Here, he clearly wants something (a yacht, a fancy house, a mistress, f-u money to go travel the world, whatever he's seen on TV to make it desirable), these sums are not so huge as to be for simply collecting money for money's sake.
Swapping people out isn't the fix, that just breeds inconsistency. Each new IT director taking things off in a new direction simply to 'own' the decision process. Sure its a bad decision, but its *their* decision, its not the company on autopilot.
The thing to do is to prosecute these "you have to do me a favor though" events as a deterrent. Throw them in prison, even if they're rich old white guys covered in fake tan. Let them rot, so the others screwing over their companies are deterred from heading down that route.
The reason white collar crime is so prevalent is because its mostly unpunished. Fix that and you fix white collar crime.
Yes. He has been charged; but where are the charges for the people who paid the bribes. In the UK at least, and I assume this would apply anywhere with a sane justice system, it is equally illegal both to offer and to accept a bribe. Many companies - including all the ones I worked at - had very strict rules about it, too, and interminable training courses about how to avoid and how to report it.
At the very least, those companies that paid the bribes should be cleaning house too, starting with whoever signed off on the options. It's fairly easy to hide a bung as a "consulting fee"; stock options, not so much.
And then somebody should take a good long look at whoever audited the books of those companies and signed them off...
The reason white collar crime is so prevalent is because its mostly unpunished. Fix that and you fix white collar crime.
I find your abundance of faith disturbing.
Pretty much everything we know about human beings, particularly from psychology and behavioral economics, tells us that people are not rational economic agents. The credible threat of punishment may deter some crime; it does not, and never will, eliminate it.
"Swap out people on a regular basis,"
Absolute cods-wallop! Why should I lose my job 'cos of your paranoia while I'm good at my job, that's not fair or right.
What you do is get your compliance dept and IT compliance officer ( you do have one of those right?! eveyr company needs ones! ) put proper auditing in place, ensure oversight and paperwork is in place and make people take holidays and ensure things are checked while they're not about to cover things up IF they're up to no good.
I've been through hundreds of project audits over the years (all clean). Auditors have asked very incisive questions. I once had to explain why I was writing off £300,000 worth of 3 com kit after 12 months, the simple answer was that a new entrant had produced a new switch which was more powerful offered greater management for less than the annual maintenance cost of the 3com monsters we had been using. The new entrant was Cisco LOL.
We had a similar conversation about 'missing' £250,000 worth of network switches after our county wide network had experienced multiple lightning strikes. We had had to deploy all our spare kit initially then swap cards between switches to get the network back on its feet. We did completely lose track of where individual switches were for a while as we had a constant stream being sent of for repair for months. Done even get me started on some of he 'vapourware' purchases I had to make to keep discount levels on mainframe operating systems, Trying to explain, why I'd be spending £40,000 on a piece of software I would never get installed to gain £300,000 worth of discount on other produces I needed was always interesting. It eould have been easy to gloss these over with some auditors as its just so bloody confusing
Which is to say, he will face the white man's justice, and serve less time than someone who held up a taco truck at spork point.
The only question is weather he will get the usual white collar sentencing guidelines, of if the DA will REALLY throw the book at him by making sure the fines are actually more then what he swindled in kickbacks.
But I'm sure he's just a great guy who made a mistake, unlike taco truck guy. That guy's evil. He probably didn't even share the stolen tacos with is family. The monster.
This is federal court, so it's a United States Attorney, not a District Attorney.
The US Sentencing Guidelines have a long document that indicates more stringent penalties when related to drugs, terrorism, sexual explotation of minors, and, in the case of money laundering, sophisitication of the money laundering scheme. I'd wager the US Attorney will push for a long sentence based on the shell company. See page 326 in this document here.
Overall federal sentencing guidelines page:
What do you bet he ends up in Club Fed with tennis courts and his lawyers work on an appeal reducing whatever sentence the judge hands out? Add in early release and the sporker will do more time in worse conditions than Mr. White Privilege.
Looks like a Poe factor of 0.8 on that comment.
Of course, meta-Poe says we can't tell whether you're trying for a high Poe factor (a deliberately ambiguous post intended to elicit a maximally-mixed reaction), or for a low one and you just aren't making your tone clear.
If it's the latter, name checks out.
He should have to fully reimburse Netflix for what he stole from them before he is allowed to pay a penny of either his fines or his taxes. Otherwise, after fines of twice what he stole, he might not have enough money to reimburse the victim for what was stolen, which should be the first priority.
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