> if the exec were a corporation, it would have been legal

No. It would not.

"Kail approved contracts to purchase IT products and services from smaller outside vendor companies and authorized their payment." This is a commonly outsourced function. If I hire a company to manage my IT procurement and learn they're getting undisclosed kickbacks, they'd be breaking the same laws Kail did.

It depends on the fine points of if the company is managing procurement or selling 3rd party services to fit a need. If the latter, it is a markup, not a kickback

Well you can’t exactly defraud yourself, can you?

This was exactly what I was thinking. Shouldn't the real point to this be we need to make this illegal across the board. It doesn't seem like it would have suddenly made more sense if Netflix got the kickback.

How would Netflix get a kickback paid from money from Netflix?