[HN Gopher] Six indicted in multimillion dollar scheme to bribe ...
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Six indicted in multimillion dollar scheme to bribe Amazon
employees,contractors
Author : ikeboy
Score : 56 points
Date : 2020-09-18 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.justice.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.justice.gov)
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Waiting for the real indictments from 2008 fraud. Until then,
| whatever.
| ponker wrote:
| Amazing. Bezos outsourcing compliance to the federal government,
| saving money and getting access to harsher punishments than he
| can dispense himself. Genius
| president wrote:
| I would assume this goes on A LOT. There is a lot of trust given
| to employees in tech companies.
| ikeboy wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17999282
|
| Story from two years ago
| masonhensley wrote:
| > In total, after their fraudulent reinstatement, the products
| and merchants earned in excess of $100 million in sales revenue.
|
| Woah. Was not expecting it to be that big.
|
| > More specifically, the Indictment alleges that the defendants
| served as consultants to so-called third-party ("3P") sellers on
| the Amazon Marketplace.
|
| Most companies have their employees sign onboarding documents or
| do an annual "business conduct" policy review. Any thoughts on a
| better way to manage something like this at scale? On one hand, I
| have a bad taste in my mouth from past employment situations that
| dictate "we own every though that enters your mind 24/7" - but
| consulting regarding your current employer, yikes.
|
| I guess ethics aren't boolean to some.
| viraptor wrote:
| There's some space been the extremes. You're normally not
| allowed to say anything that would be a company secret, but
| nothing should stop you from consulting on Amazon Marketplace
| as long as you use only public information you know very well.
| If you're already past ignoring company secrets, is unlikely
| preventing other employment would stop you already.
| ikeboy wrote:
| Don't outsource critical business logic (like whether an 8-9
| figure account should be suspended) to Indian low level
| contractors?
|
| This has long been a major issue with Amazon - often the people
| making the decisions as to whether a business with dozens of
| employees gets to keep selling or goes bankrupt are being paid
| less than US minimum wage in another country.
| kinkrtyavimoodh wrote:
| > to Indian low level contractors
|
| So this style of casual racism / xenophobia is ok if directed
| at approved targets?
|
| Pretty sure if it happened to be 6 African American
| individuals who were indicted it would not be acceptable to
| say "Don't outsource your work to low-level Black
| contractors".
| single_source wrote:
| I work for Amazon and have had people reach out to me about doing
| this with a large price tag attached to it.
| koolba wrote:
| How much is "large"?
| SomewhatLikely wrote:
| The article says 10 employees and contractors accepted the bribes
| but this seems to be focused on those paying. I hope they also go
| after those accepting the bribes.
| newcomputer wrote:
| Agreed. Accepting the bribe seems to be a worse offense than
| offering it. I'm not sure why the employees were not indicted.
| randyrand wrote:
| Whats the difference between a bribe and payment for services?
| legally?
|
| For example, is an employee selling their knowledge about how a
| company works a bribe? Software contractors often sell
| information like that. But it does seem bribe-like.
| kinkrtyavimoodh wrote:
| It's not bribe if it's an authentic, official channel.
|
| For eg. if the DMV starts a program where you can pay $50 to
| get an instant walk-in appointment, it's not a bribe. However,
| if a DMV employee asks you to slip her a 50 dollar bill in
| return of an instant appointment, that is a bribe.
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(page generated 2020-09-18 23:00 UTC)