I know of people who AWS fully sponsored, including business class intercontinental travel, to attend re:Invent which is essentially a week long holiday party, by virtue of AWS bill.

Every vendor has marketing budget and a decent portion of it goes to keeping their point people at clients happy. You can call it kick back or whatever, it’s a matter of semantics.

So yes it is normal. And no it’s neither cynical and nor have I been involved in. But I’ve seen it happen around me. So I know it’s a routine thing.

> I know of people who AWS fully sponsored, including business class intercontinental travel, to attend re:Invent which is essentially a week long holiday party, by virtue of AWS bill.

Flying people to an AWS conference seems entirely different than funneling money into a single person's bank account.

Yes, I know these conferences have a party-like atmosphere, but it's not done surreptitiously and it's not siphoning money out of the deal into someone's pockets.

Pharmaceutical companies used all inclusive "conferences" to influence doctors to prescribe more opioids. It was effective enough to be banned.

> Accepting a free trip to a drug-company-sponsored conference guided doctors to write more prescriptions of the company’s drugs, a spike of 80 to 190 percent

https://www.drugwatch.com/news/2012/01/18/pharmaceutical-com...

America is generally good about limiting things to legal graft. I can't offer an elected official money in exchange for a vote, but I can donate millions to entities controlled by the elected officials that are my "friends" and make sure they know about it.

It doesn't really seem that different.

You think inviting someone to conferences is the same thing as putting $700k in their personal bank account?

Is this satire? What is going on in this thread?

At least in the medical field, conferences only provided the thinnest veneer. Doctors were paid handsome fees to present, which is tantamount to dropping money in their bank account when you compare it to other professions whether people often go to conferences on their own (or company’s) dime.

Some people think that quantitative differences are never qualitative differences. Zero, one, infinity, right?

It is VERY different, come on.

It's an open conference offered by the largest player in the space vs. a shady deal between a supplier and ONE person of another company, without its employers consent, on top of that.

If I know AWS will fly me out for good times every year (but only so long as I select them for my Big Enterprise Account), I'm more likely to pick them over a vendor that won't do the same, regardless of what's better for the company. Bribery doesn't require currency, it just requires an exchange of value.

And my boss knows that, and it's okay for executives to make corporate decisions for personal reasons. It's not okay for executives to make corporate decisions for personal reasons without acknowledgement, and particularly not with explicit deception. The difference between "my product is better for intangible reasons" and "my product is better because of lies out of teeth is fraud.

Taking personal kickbacks from vendors can be legal, so long as it's reported to your employer (and the IRS). What's not legal is hiding it from your employer because they have policies against it, and every (large) employer does.

The sole owners of large private companies can and do occasionally get personal kickbacks for their business. It rarely makes sense for them, because as owners of large private corporations they have better way of extracting cash from those companies (like literally paying themselves a salary or bonus). Totally legal, though.

It’s different in facts, but it’s not different in spirit.

Did you know that pharma sales reps take out doctors to play golf all expenses paid, plus fancy restaurant lunch in the end?

Is that different?

How about a lobbyist donating money to a political party?

Is that different?

Google the law of reciprocity. It’s human nature.

It is different in spirit.

A marketing scheme intended to attract new customers is well within what's morally accepted. Also, it's not like every guy that goes to AWS re:Invent comes back with a brand new luxury car. What they get is just some good food and drinks, while they're there, and that's just providing good hospitality for your guests. It also does not happen behind closed doors, and most of the people that go are already existing customers.

vs.

Corrupt company approaches corrupt employee off the record to offer cash in exchange of contracts that would not get assigned to them otherwise (because if they were, they wouldn't resort to this).

The main difference here is the scale.

"Let us take you on a $2000 vacation" vs. "Let us take you on a $700,000 vacation." One is objectively ridiculous - this is the difference.

So what you’re saying is taking a smaller bribe is okay? Just as long as it’s not a “ridiculous” bribe…

There are thresholds elsewhere. For example, a civil servant can accept a gift, up to a very small amount, from a vendor without being an ethics violation.

But there’s proportional impact as well. The person who got the AWS treatment might be responsible for $50K of AWS budget. And the person at Netflix is responsible for millions of dollars of budgets, royalties and other schemes.

> It's an open conference offered by the largest player in the space

In Vegas...

Hmm, even at my most cynical I would say the difference is the free conference is a much smaller (and thus presumably less effective) bribe. Giving away tickets to a conference which they sell the tickets for costs AMZN very little (sure, there are costs associated with putting it on, but those would have had to be paid anyhow, adding an attendee or two won't change much). So it's a few grand worth of airplane tickets vs. $700K...

This situation is like lobbying: is it the people's voice in fungible action or is it mega-corporations funneling money directly into politicians pockets?

The answer is probably both, and any attempt to litigate it will probably be abused and lead to even more issues.

That is not really close to what these charges are.

Kail received money and stock directly, not as part of a business or sales exchange. Being flown to a conference where you'll be told the merits of your potential purchase is obviously very different.

Even if Kail had innocently owned stock in a company being evaluated it likely would have been a conflict of interest and they should have stepped away from the evaluation. This happens all the time. As a CEO I can tell you I've had people stop a call partway through because they realize they're conflicted out of the discussion and I'll have to talk to a neutral party.

While normal business travel can have a bit of a boondoggle aspect to it (and your example would probably not be OK for US government employees), it's not generally considered a personal payment or gift as a kickback would be. So, no, it's not the same thing in the manner that paying for someone's personal vacation week on a tropical island would be.

Companies pick up at least some expenses for customers, partners, journalists, analysts, etc. to attend business events all the time. And everyone involved is very clear about the difference between that and handing them a stack of bills under the table.

(And speaking for myself, I can think of a lot of places that I'd rather be than Las Vegas for re:Invent.)

There is no magic loophole by giving people stuff rather than paying them money directly. In tax law this is just called a non-cash benefit and it is taxable all the same. I'm sure the people writing corruption guidelines had the same insight.

The "loophole" is that, for gifts of more than a token amount, it has to be a legitimate business expense--whoever is picking up the bill. Waiving a conference fee and covering some or all of the travel expenses to a conference, would widely be considered legitimate business expenses. Normally these would be picked up by my company these days if I had a business reason to attend an event and I need to pay for registration and travel. But conference organizers routinely waive at least the conference fees for journalists, analysts, speakers, and possibly others they want to attend.

Working in finance, I have to report any gift above €50. This includes when I would receive a gift or lottery for a training, a conference, etc. So for us it is at least treated like a potential personal payment.

At one point in my career I was one of those people. Not AWS but I went to many a conference on the vendor's dime. Ran up some impressive bar and restaurant tabs while there. Also on their dime. Some vendors didn't have large conferences and would fly me to a nice resort somewhere for a few days which included some product info sessions. Usually at that point the people trying to keep your business and those trying to get your business are all doing the same thing so it is all ineffective in influencing your choices. In fact during that time I would say a majority of the vendors I was involved in selecting actually did neither.

At none of them was there any kind quid pro quo even hinted at. My employer knew about and approved all trips beforehand.

This is way different than what happened here. Direct payments to an employee for award of work without knowledge of their employer.

Kickbacks are a personal payment, an illegal personal incentive to a business transaction.

This guy was soliciting cash and stocks! A crummy sponsored trip to a conference would have been arranged through the employer, and is not the same thing.

Also, the set of people with a happy home life and people who are excited by corporate hospitality is a small one.

Not the same at all. Paying for people to attend your event versus paying them directly as income are worlds apart.

It's all fun and games until you swap AWS for Purdue Pharma and point people for doctors and suddenly there is an opium addiction epidemic. This shit has real consequences.

I guess at least the courts are there to fix things... except when it's also okay for members of the highest court of the land to get sponsored golf/hunting trips, and even be caught dead in one...

What is this referencing?

I don't think the argument "I've seen it happen around me" means that it is necessarily routine or common throughout society. If I'm a basketball player and most of the people around me can dunk a basketball, while it may be common in my circle, it certainly is not common throughout the American or global population.

I think in the UK they have laws which basically say that bribery is defined by employers. It is bribery if employers don't approve the payments/gifts as part of the job. I think it is similar in the US. People in your examples probably got the approval, but this Netflix executive definitely didn't according to the article.

Things like that - e.g. conferences, paid travel, etc - are common. But I think it's different from a manager charging kickbacks for awarding an IT contract, and on only by pure semantic.

or not trying to normalize but pointing out that its already normalized to the point that you can’t be an effective employee due to competition with people winning deal flow via kickbacks

The actions in question occurred almost 10 years ago, how many people lost commissions and bonuses and promotions and jobs and relationships by trying to play fair?

acknowledging this isn’t being an apologist for it or condoning it

even the DOJ indictment only acknowledges Netflix shareholders being deprived of tiny tiny amounts of profits, not everyone at all the other companies in the wake over the last decade, which is kind of a slap in the face and like a joke that public servants actually bothered, using that rationale.

so with that reality the incentive is still there to kickback and relax

Yes, this is effectively a race to the bottom situation and is a form of corruption of the rule of law. In today's world, we tend to have a culture of "letting things slide" and all this does is gradually normalize and escalate breaking the law over a long period of time.

Cost of wage theft by employers is 3 times the total cost of burglaries. There's a few articles about wage theft over the year and probably 100 a day about burglaries. White collar crime does not pay.

That is the most amazing statistic!

What exactly is the definition of wage theft? Do you have a source? I would love to have it

Not sure about this source, but [0] gives some insight into this. Wage theft is typically defined as legally earned wages than an employer refuses to give to the employee (think tips not being given appropriately, overtime hours not compensated for as an hourly employee, etc.)

[0] https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...

It’s a side effect of having so many laws that it’s impossible not to break some of them. And this is coming from someone on the left.

I'm not aware of any laws I've unintentionally broken. Which kinds of laws are you speaking of?

Ever been under 18 and owned a spray paint can or a permanent marker? Crime.

Ever connected to an open wifi network without directly confirming with the owner you're allowed? Crime.

Ever held your phone while driving? Crime. Happen to also be headed downhill and hit 1mph over the limit? Double crime!

Ever walked across your street outside of clearly marked crossings? Crime.

Ever sung happy birthday in public? Crime.

Ever played a poker game for small stakes at home? Crime.

Ever had a pet and not registered them with your county? Crime.

Ever peed outside? Crime.

Ever bought something online and not reported it for taxes? Crime.

Ever sat on the sidewalk? Crime.

The list goes on and on.

> Ever sung happy birthday in public? Crime.

I'm assuming this is regarding Happy Birthday being copyrighted? If so, you should know that that copyright was declared invalid, and Happy Birthday is now public domain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Copyrigh...

Also, copyright infringement is only a crime if it is done for financial gain. Otherwise, it's a civil issue. You won't get jailed for pirating a movie. You CAN get jailed for SELLING pirated copies of a movie.

> Ever played a poker game for small stakes at home? Crime.

I heard this isn't true unless the host takes a rake, though this might depend on the state.

Right, I'm sure a white-collar exec took kickbacks because poker is banned in some jurisdictions.

I agree that we massively overcriminalize things. But apologizing for a crook this way is just silly.

(Not to mention you're factually incorrect on some of this, universalizing the rest when it isn't universal, and generally being very hyperbolic.)

It’s more about the general erosion of the rule of law. It forces you to weigh “how wrong is this” versus “will I get caught”. We make these choices every day, and after a while, it moves your own morality (especially when faceless, abusive corporate structures are the victim).

When unchecked, corruption becomes a local maximum. The corporate version of “plata o plumbo” (silver or lead, the choice Pablo Escobar gave government officials in Columbia) is an unspoken rule at a lot of “cash cow” companies or mature industries; they won’t trust you unless they can hold something like this over your head. Step out of line and they prosecute you, or if you don’t play ball your metrics will look like shit and you’ll get fired for poor performance.

My guess is that this guy just made some powerful enemies.

I'm responding directly to the comment above, asking which crimes they might have unintentionally committed.

You'll notice I make no comment about the kickbacks here.

And yes - the whole POINT is that none of these are all that intuitive, and they vary by region. So the odds are very good that you're violating some city/town/state ordinance fairly often, but the lack of enforcement means you never consider it.

For those questioning the online taxes - if you are in California you absolutely have to pay taxes on these purchases. You can pay actual taxes or an "estimate" based on your income if you believe you have normal levels of purchasing.

From [1]: Generally, if sales tax would apply when you buy physical merchandise in California, use tax applies when you make a similar purchase without tax from a business located outside the state. For these purchases, the buyer is required to pay use tax separately.

[1] https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/taxes-and-fees/use-tax.htm

This read like straight out of a Legal Eagle Youtube video.

I think this is like the exact list in a recent video of his. Great channel by the way if people are unfamiliar

"Happy birthday" is public domain and

you don't need to report things you buy online on your taxes

> "Happy birthday" is public domain

Only after 2016. Before that you would have been on the hook for ~$700 per performance to warner media group.

Admittedly, in most "Private" settings, you'd be fine. The most common place to get flagged was in a restaurant where the waiters sing to you.

> you don't need to report things you buy online on your taxes

Ooof, I got some bad news for you, buddy. You ABSOLUTELY DO need to report any online purchase that does not charge you sales tax at time of payment. Most retailers will now do this (primarily because Amazon abused the shit out of this to give customers an additional ~10% off, and the IRS started handing out fines) but for things like: Craigslist, Ebay, Alibaba, etc - You better be reporting it, you little criminal you.

> Only after 2016.

Which it is right now, so "happy birthday" is public domain.

> You ABSOLUTELY DO need to report any online purchase that does not charge you sales tax

The original post didn't say "that do not charge tax." Yes you must pay taxes where applicable, like all purchases.

He asked which laws he might have unintentionally broken. Unless he's an incredibly literate 6 year old... I suspect he's old enough to have sung happy birthday before 2016, which would have been breaking the law.

The original post also didn't specify that you picked an online vendor that's calculating this tax for you... And in some places, you're still supposed to be reporting it! Fun times!

>you don't need to report things you buy online on your taxes

In at least some states (e.g. Massachusetts) you are indeed supposed to report out of state purchases brought into the state whether or not the company selling to you collected the state sales tax or not. (Larger companies shipping to you now have to collect.)

* I'm not aware of any laws I've unintentionally broken. *

So, working as intended?

I get what your meaning but this phrasing cracked me up.

Which laws were this Netflix exec's crimes an impossible "side effect" of?

I'm curious - which specific laws have you found to be "impossible not to break"?

How do you propose that one solves this?

The wrong people are being prosecuted, they are going after the most well connected node in a graph only when noticed.

It should not be a criminal charge.

And the civil charge likely needs to be levied elsewhere, and let the individual perpetrator be embroiled in private litigation with the employer and associated companies.

I see the same absurdity in the FCPA. Americans are sent into to foreign and already corrupt markets to land business, but if they do anything competitive in that corrupt market, then they … have to pay a kickback to the United States too as punishment for paying kickbacks?

Some good points.

This guy was able to extract kickbacks from nine different vendors. So in fact, it looks quite a few companies have systems in place to "facilitate" deals if needed.

And none of these nine vendors (or any of their competitors that Kail might have approached) reported the crime to the authorities.

  This was pay to play and the play was not delivered. Hence the blowback from upset "victims" coming after their money.

Kickbacks are common sorry man. Its harder in public sector because of the eyeson you but there are ways around it. You just have to be in the right position.

Kickbacks are almost never posecuted because both sidea get what they want.

There are more than two sides.

Yes and no. As a thought exercise it can be thought of as two parties even if you have to pay off more than one entity in the real world.

Its part of the reason gov projects are almost always over budget and behind schedule. The only way to prevent corruption is to make the corruption more expensive than just paying upfront. However by putting these endless bureaucracies in place it also raises the total cost of the project.

Those of us not in elite circles have a little trouble getting worked up over the difference between something that looks like it's scummy, immoral cheating, but is legal, or the same, but illegal.

Same played out with the college entrance scandal. "Bribery is great and we love it a bunch—unless you do it wrong because you're not rich enough to do it right, then it's a big ol' no-no" is the message a great many received from that one.

The first time I heard someone talk about a "commission" in this context, I was totally confused -- "I thought salespeople got commissions, not customers?" -- until it all snapped into focus and I was like: "Oh." And from the way they talked, this was normal for B2B sales? So then I look at some decisions that have been made in companies where I've worked, and I wonder...

I'm always reminded that HN is global, and sometimes people are representing what's normal or common where they're sitting, not necessarily everywhere.

I appreciate you pointing this out, I easily forget this.

I think the extreme version of this is me taking something that is routine or normal for me individually and assuming all other humans must do it. Or taking something that my spouse, boss, or parent did and assume all spouses, bosses, or parents must do it. Not necessarily.

The behaviour of many execs I have worked with would be explained well by this sort of arrangement, but it could equally have been a mix of stubbornness and having no clue. It's politer to assume it was corruption.

I’m sure every employee has to read their company’s code of conduct and those are quite unambiguous about what’s allowed and what isn’t and that which isn’t is serious and will get you fired --no company wants to have to mobilize lawyers and waste hundreds of professionally billed hours for an employee violating regulations.

Usually such things as CoC are worded in such a way that everyone is guilty. It is a tool by those in power to dismiss anyone they like.

"You must report all gifts from entities seeking to sell products or services to the company" seems pretty unambiguous.

Obviously, some rules are less ambiguous than others. For me, it is hard to understand why lobbying is legal at all.

what I don't understand is none of the companies that bribed him had criminal charges levied against them. doesn't this reek of companies doing bad ok, smash the ants?

Heh, I have been working for a some corporations in the last 10 years where there was a sort of kickback scheme in place.

Some times (very rarely a person got caught, no criminal charges) some timed it was known and nobody cared.

Some of my friend chose not to become managers because they did not want to get involved in the scheme.

Oh please. Ever watched Mad Men, or any other tv/film that shows the wining and dining of prospective clients by a sales person/team? Every time a sales person spends money on a prospective client is written off as an expense, so the gov't is pretty much condoning it.

There are tons of stories of big pharma sending doctors to lavish resorts in the guise of a "conference". Ever heard of payola? The music business has been based on bribes. Why would you think of the film business being different? Hell, the states are involved just as much with tax incentives to entice productions to use their state/cities as location for that production.

You're being quite cynical trying to wrap any person with knowledge of these payout schemes as being involved/complicit.

Mad Men is a fictional TV show set in the 1950s. "Big Pharma" sending doctors to resorts is now illegal in the US under the Sunshine Act.

I'm always amazed at how people around me really think this way. Yes, every high school chemistry teacher is a meth overlord, and you can just walk into Bank of Spain and rob it, haven't you seen it? facepalm

You're sarcasm is so good, I can't tell which direction it is aimed. That's pretty impressive.

Yes, I know my chem101 teacher wasn't Heisenberg. Yes, I understand how TV is fiction. However, are you really so thick to not realize that fiction is based on reality. Fiction isn't written in a vaccum, and the most interesting plots are typically based on some real situation the author has experienced, seen/heard, etc. Yes, it is dramatized to make the really boring parts interesting so people tune in, but come on. If you don't think a Don Draper/Walter White type existed as a single person or an amalgamation of multiple people then you just have your head in the sand.

Using modern TV/Film/media in examples isn't a cluelessness on the speaker's part. It's used as something much more relatable than an esoteric story that you might or might not be able to provide a link to.

> I can't tell how much of it is random people projecting their cynicism onto the business world, or if it's people who have been part of bribery/kickback schemes themselves trying to normalize the behavior online.

I think most people don't understand the difference between an agreed to agency fee/reseller margin deal, a direct incentive program, and someone just taking money, on the side. Direct Incentives (also call spiffs) are where a supplier pays a bonus directly to the person who sold the deal. These are always agreed to between the companies and reported. Without permission of the employer, they could be very illegal or a major violation of your employment contract.

>I can't tell how much of it is random people projecting their cynicism onto the business world, or if it's people who have been part of bribery/kickback schemes themselves trying to normalize the behavior online.

Or people who actually know about those things, having worked in/with/studied the various industries, without having "been part of bribery/kickback schemes themselves", and have seen them to be fairly widespread - that's a missing third option.

I added this, because the above comment is still that of the proverbial starry-eyed kid arriving with the bus to L.A. from Nebraska, and paints a false dichotomy that ends up with the same conclusion ("this can't possibly be widespread"):

(a) it's either cynical people (so this isn't widespread, it's just their cynicism that thinks so)

(b) or it's crooks looking to normalize their behavior (so this isn't widespread, it's just isolated "bad-apple" cases justyfing themselves)

Even merely studying different industries, you'll find such scandals (and worse) in some of the biggest companies on Earth, with upper management knowledge and encourangement, collaboration with local governments, cover-up and diplomatic protection from the company's own government, and so on.

Just an example, from one of the biggest companies in the world, with tons of different executives and branches involved, and with different corruption cases all around the world:

https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-263.htm

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-lt-latam-siemens-b...

https://www.reuters.com/article/norway-siemens-idUSL13418322...

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal

How about IBM:

https://medium.com/worm-capital/the-ibm-hall-of-shame-a-semi...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-drops-multi-country-bribery...

https://fortune.com/2017/07/27/ibm-poland-investigation/

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-12793255

Microsoft?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-pay-25m-to-doj-an...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-settlement-idUS...

GE and more:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/fbi-targets-johnson-johnson-...

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/whistleb...

https://www.industryweek.com/the-economy/regulations/article...

A general study focusing on past:

"As the 2000s decade progressed, a different breed of corporate scandals began to surface. For example, companies such as ABB Limited, Daimler Chrysler, El Paso Corporation, General Electric, Halliburton, Lee Dynamics, Lucent Technologies, and Siemens AG were found guilty of violating U.S. law and consequently, also rattled shareholders’ trust (Cascini & DelFavero, 2008, p.27). The named businesses were found guilty of committing bribery (...)"

https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

And we haven't even got into weapons, aviation, construction, and medicine industry bribes (industries which are to bribes what Xerox PARC was for UI innovations!)

I will state this isn’t normal for large enterprises, at least at that scale. Most software vendors are happy to invite buyers to Warriors games, which is a lot cheaper than the 0.25% dilution. I’ve even seen folks recuse themselves from recommending prior employers because they still had shares.

I think the problem lands somewhere between “widespread corruption” and “never.”

Salespeople can hit their quotas without kickbacks.

What I do see from time to time is this happening “fully disclosed”’at the very senior level. A CEO of a major database company convinces the board to buy a firm that he has an interest in. A CEO “allows” a company to rent out his property for corporate housing. These are fully disclosed, and therefore considered acceptable.

>I will state this isn’t normal for large enterprises, at least at that scale. Most software vendors are happy to invite buyers to Warriors games, which is a lot cheaper than the 0.25% dilution.

Salesforce or GitHub selling seats to some random company sure don't.

Large software vendors like Microsoft, Siemens (their software dept), IBM, and more, have routinely bribed all around the world to win government contracts.

I guess for me it comes down to numbers. What does "fairly widespread" equate to? 50% of American corporate executives do this? 10%? 1%? Or are we talking about global executives at firms that net over $1B revenue per year?

It may seem nitpicky and yet I think the context and statistics matter—without it, I think we can fall into very binary discussions of people being corrupt or clean, bad or good.

> I guess for me it comes down to numbers. What does "fairly widespread" equate to?

Exactly. It's easy to search the internet internet for 10+ news stories about just about any bad behavior over the past decade, but that doesn't make it the norm.

>I can't tell how much of it is random people projecting their cynicism onto the business world

Is this on HN? Because I rarely sees it. Most people working in Tech and specifically software development are so abstracted from these type of things they think they are extremely rare.

It is still a common thing though. At least it happens much more often than most people thought. And it is not cynicism but personal experience.

If you’re on a government contract, it’s quite likely you’re exposed to all sorts of opportunities for wrong doing, even as a technical worker.

Try talking to a retired government worker for juicy stories some time (there are three generations of tech workers in my family, and all of us have done government work or contracting since the 1960s).

This is why government workers and contractors have to take so much anti-corruption training (I’ve never been subject to this in any purely private sector jobs).

Happens in manufacturing allll the time, especially if you're contracting our work to companies in India/China/Vietnam/etc.

More to the point, virtually every senior member of Presidential administrations do this almost blatantly, big-D or big-R, doesn't matter.

This was hundreds of thousands. Those are billions.

What's the difference? The person who got caught was a small fry and couldn't pull the strings.

> More to the point, virtually every senior member of Presidential administrations do this almost blatantly, big-D or big-R, doesn't matter.

This is the sort of cynical thing people say because other people say it. Spiro Agnew did it, sure. That was a while ago. What are your other examples? Since virtually every member does this, you should have hundreds. And remember you need a roughly balanced count of Republicans and Democrats. Obama was in office for 8 years. That should be quite a pile.

Pure cynicism is an argument against rules and accountability generally.

Well, do you think our politicians aren't in the same position of the esteemed Michael Kail, VP of Netflix IT Operations? People in power are going to be hit with sex, money, or power. Money, it seems, is just the easiest attack vector.

A rumor is that Reed Hastings made it his personal mission to ensure that Kail gets the right punishment for he breach the trust of freedom-and-responsibility that Netflix gave to its employees.

My question is how this could lead to jail time? I mean, its against policy, the employer can sue for damages, fire the person, etc. But to throw someone in jail for breaking essentially a corporate policy seems really off.

It's corporate corruption and this type of behavior prevents companies from competing fairly. It's bigger than "corporate policy". That's like saying "theft" is against corporate policy, so when I embezzled $10K I should just get fired instead of jailed.

Netflix is a publicly traded company. They have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder to increase shareholder value by always selecting the best interest of the shareholders. It is way beyond a corporate policy. It is stealing shareholder value.

Oh no, not the shareholder value! How high up on the org chart do employees have a direct fiduciary duty to the shareholders? Presumably there is some breakpoint below which is becomes mere incompetence.

> But to throw someone in jail for breaking essentially a corporate policy seems really off.

It "seems off" because that obviously isn't what happened.

> Jury Earlier Returned 28 Guilty Verdicts Convicting Michael Kail of Fraud and Money Laundering for Pay-To-Play Payments from Tech Startups Seeking Netflix Contracts

These are crimes, not mere violations of corporate policy.

> “Bribery and kickbacks are pernicious crimes that stifle Silicon Valley’s culture of competitive innovation,” said Acting United States Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds. “Michael Kail used his highly compensated Netflix position to siphon cash and valuable stock options from his tech vendors, the same vendors whose Netflix contracts he signed and whose technologies he pushed his teams to use. Such crimes come with a cost, as reflected by the prison sentence that Kail will now serve.”

So the person took bribes and hurt other tech vendors and the corporation. Sure. But suppose you hurt the organization and partners by being incompetent at your work. Or having bad judgement, or being lazy, or a million other things. Would it be okay to send those people to prison?

"Pay-to-Play" isn't illegal. I don't even know what it is. Coke pays to have their beverage in AMC theaters. Is that pay to play? Is Pepsi more worthy of that slot? "Money Laundering" is incredibly broad and can be applied to a lot of things.

Mate, they got him for numerous counts of wire fraud, money laundering, and more. These are all crimes, not mere violations of corporate policy. If you can't square your understanding of the law with what happened, it's your deficient understanding of the law that is to blame.

Your point, as I understand it: you disagree with a jury's conclusion in one, high-profile case, therefore the entire justice system isn't necessary or there should be no consequences for white-collar crime.

Or perhaps more charitably: you've become disillusioned about the judicial process in general, seeing a lot of results you consider unjust, therefore the entire justice system isn't necessary or there should be no consequences for white-collar crime.

Neither is even a bit convincing. If one can significantly increase their personal wealth at mere risk of being fired, then the least honest people will accumulate all the wealth and power.

That kind of comparison is meaningless and useless. The question should not be, "Should we criminalize fraud if people disagree about the results of this one specific unrelated case?"

The question should be, "Should we criminalize fraud and if so what are the optimal penalties for disincentivizing new and repeat activity?"

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

We could definitely talk about the criminal justice system, but basically saying "the jury was wrong and I'm mad" isn't substantive.

It’s human nature to scratch each other’s backs. It’s happening, will continue to happen, and there’s little which can be done.

It’s always a game of cat and mouse. Legalizing small time bribery where it can be done out in the open would probably be far more effective then advocating for things like increased workplace surveillance.

Thinking commerce can happen without corruption or kickbacks is just naive.

It's also human nature to murder each other. Natural doesn't mean good.

https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-e...

its nature to murder. humans murder each other far less than other primates.

The average American may earn something like 125k in 30 months. 700k in exchange for a small chance of 30 months in jail probably sounds like a good deal to a purely rational and amoral person.

The average executive in a high money industry like film is clearing a lot more than that and is looking for any and all advantages that come from the position. It can come in any form from having a company car to getting an executive producer credit on some show they actually didn't produce. You're naive if you actually think this doesn't happen everyday in the film industry / culture. That's just business and it's part of the free market. I don't see how any of this is any business of the feds.

But it's not usually the average American in a position to receive bribes like that. 700K for an executive might not be a good deal for most.

Depends on the probability of being caught, which is usually extremely low.

True, but at those levels the marginal utility of money is much lower than 30 months of your life. Clearly some people take the chance, I wouldn't.

The average American likely isn't in a position to make business spending decisions that would warrant a 700k bribe, though.

Except that he has to return the 700k, Pay additional fine of 50K , go to Jail for 30 months and not to mention that his reputation is ruined and he will never get another high profile white collar job. Yea, totally worth it.

In retrospect yes. If you can prove the probability he would be caught is low enough, then you could probably show it was worth the risk. I don't know what that probability is, but based on how rare executives are actually nabbed over this sort of thing I'm not so sure we can say with certainty he made a bad bet.

Edit: Half-awake, math wrong, ignore me.

If 700k - p_caught * (value of 30 months of your life + 700k + reputation + fines) is greater than 0, a rational and amoral person should execute the trade.

Am I reading your comment correctly? GP says that, over 30 months, the average American makes $125k. Given a $68k per year average that you provide, that's $170k after 30 months, which is even more than GP estimated. Even if the average were $40k/year, that's still $100k after 30 months.

Said they made "something like." I'm sorry for not making it clearer it was meant to be a rough guideline not a precise number.

Looks like jjulius used 20 months in a year.

I used 12 months in a year and went up to 20 months, too tired to realize that they were talking about 2.5 years instead of 1.5. Original comment edited, my mistake, let's all go back to sleep now.