[HN Gopher] Embezzlers Are Nice People (2017)
___________________________________________________________________
Embezzlers Are Nice People (2017)
Author : VHRanger
Score : 344 points
Date : 2024-04-15 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.stimmel-law.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.stimmel-law.com)
| neilk wrote:
| I always thought the gentleman thief was a fictional character.
| Assuming this is more or less real (the detailed dialogue is a
| bit concerning) it's fascinating.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Sociopaths who become con men may appear gentlemen. I've met
| one who posed as a fashion designer. Absolutely dangerous
| individual, but you'd never guess it from looking or meeting
| him.
| jprete wrote:
| How did you figure it out?
| kranke155 wrote:
| When he got close to what he wanted, he started lying about
| everything and anything. Eventually I realised he was
| trying to commit real estate fraud, and trying to illegally
| take over property through a series of stratagems. The
| lying was the giveaway. He just couldn't stop lying.
|
| Anything and everything you asked him, he was: - always the
| victim - going to get his lawyers - subtly threatening
| violence - demanding something strange or bizarre, like
| documents he didn't need access to.
|
| For people not used to it, it was a shock. He seemed
| affluent by every standard.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| You have to at least be able to put on a veneer of decency to
| get into these jobs at some point.
|
| Otherwise you would piss everyone off.
| madoff2 wrote:
| Madoff is the obvious example
| monero-xmr wrote:
| > _I had another client about the same time, an elderly business
| man disliked by almost all that knew him, a truly unpleasant
| individual who never praised anyone, made more money than anyone
| I knew and could be cast as Scrooge except for his enjoyment of
| fishing which was all that he truly cared about other than money.
| But honest...he often would give more to the other side in the
| bargain than they asked because it was better business tactics to
| have a vendor who was making good money with you than not._
|
| > _"Eddie's just more honest than a lot of the business men I
| know... They grab a nickel here and lose a dollar in the long
| run."_
|
| I have seen this so many times, over and over. People burning
| bridges over relatively small amounts of money, discounting the
| longterm relationship, and most disastrous of all, ignoring that
| everyone has their own network and whisper to everyone what
| "really happened". You get a reputation as an asshole and then
| you wonder why everyone else seems like they don't treat you
| fairly.
| marricks wrote:
| > And, almost always, most would have made more money and had a
| more profitable career if they had simply stopped stealing and
| starting working honestly.
|
| > I mean, figure it out. An embezzler has to not only do his or
| her job well so that no one is looking over his or her shoulder
| but has to do their job so well that they can steal for months or
| years and it won't show up.
|
| Performance and pay aren't 1:1, and sometimes quite far from it.
| That imbalance or perceived imbalance could certainly drive some
| to embezzle. Bit of a just world fallacy there.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Having met people like this, it's exactly like it's said here.
| It's compulsive for them, they have to do it. Pretty sure the
| reasoning is ad hoc.
| nine_k wrote:
| So a better approach would be therapy instead of prison, I
| suppose?
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Nope. Therapy produces results only when based on a sincere
| desire to make change.
| nine_k wrote:
| Don't at least some of them want to gain control of their
| impulses?
| munk-a wrote:
| If someone is caught in a vicious spiral not only does
| Therapy sound like a better option than prison but even
| just a one time bailout might allow them to self-
| correct... I still think it'd be a good idea to have the
| therapy in place though.
|
| At the end of the day - people make mistakes, helping
| people out of those mistakes results in recidivism less
| often than you'd suspect.
| ohyes wrote:
| That's one flavor of embezzler, there probably a
| sociopath flavor as well. Sending a sociopath to therapy
| generally doesn't work.
| munk-a wrote:
| Yes - but it's very difficult to tell whether someone is
| a sociopath if they're good at it. I think it'd probably
| be safer to err on the side of therapy and let the
| therapist's recommendation or repeat offenses dictate
| whether jail time is justified.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I think it'd probably be safer to err on the side of
| therapy and let the therapist's recommendation or repeat
| offenses dictate whether jail time is justified.
|
| Repeat offenses as a signal? Sure!
|
| Therapist's recommendation? I'm skeptical. Their primary
| data is whatever the subject self-reports, and their
| secondary data is their somewhat subjective opinion on
| whether the subject has improved.
|
| If the subject does not want to stop _and_ they are smart
| enough to figure out how to embezzle or to get high
| enough to embezzle, there 's very little chance that the
| therapist would see through them.
|
| It's like EQ tests - the subject can make the test
| results say whatever they want the test results to say.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Lots of things sounds like a better option when you
| remove the constraints of actual human behavior (see
| also: economics). Unfortunately human behavior is what it
| is regardless of whether your strategy accounts for it or
| not. So again, for the cheap seats, therapy is a complete
| waste of time in 100% of instances where the individual
| in question isn't genuinely pursuing change.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Given the number of possible things wrong with a human
| that leads to bad behavior, it seems like an extreme
| claim to suggest that desire to make a change is a
| necessary component in any successful therapy. Part of
| therapy can be building that desire.
|
| For example, therapy for issues stemming from learned
| helplessness are a counter example, as learned
| helplessness implies lacking a desire to make a change as
| they have already been conditioned to seeing it as
| impossible. The therapy involves building up that desire
| by having minor successes that end up breaking down the
| mental block which formed.
| lelanthran wrote:
| None of what you said is quantitative and/or objective
| data.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| A "sincere desire to make change" isn't quantifiable in
| the first place.
| stavros wrote:
| Addiction is weird, though. A lot of the time, the addict
| doesn't actually want to be addicted.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Conversely they will often only go to rehab at the threat
| of imprisonment or abandonment by friends and family. I'm
| sure there's an underlying logic to addiction, but it
| creates behaviors that are extremely contradictory.
| stavros wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but as far as I know, the logic is
| just a failure of long-term planning to dominate over
| short-term planning. "I know I shouldn't smoke, but this
| one cigarette will feel so good".
| swores wrote:
| That's definitely one way people get addicted, but I
| suspect not the most common.
|
| A huge proportion of drug addicts (and I suspect addicts
| of sex, gambling etc I'm just less familiar with those
| addictions) started taking their drugs because of how
| tough their life was. And even if you know that starting
| to take opiates or whatever drug of choice might not be a
| sensible plan long term, if you feel so bad that you'd
| rather kill yourself than live in your head sober, it's
| possible to actually want to keep using what you re
| addicted to because you don't believe that life without
| that drug can be any better.
|
| I don't know how common this is, but anecdotally I've
| known two people who used high dose prescription
| painkillers (obtained illegal) to give them enough
| positive feelings to be able to work on their mental
| health problems, both who would've been described as
| problematically addicted by most medical professionals,
| but who managed to use the opiates to work on their core
| mental health issues until such a time that they felt
| ready to not need opiates, at which point they found it
| relatively easy to stop. Because as horrible as it is to
| get the withdrawals, it's actually not very last longing
| and it can be considerably less painful than the pain of
| having such severe mental health issues that you were
| desperate to kill yourself before you started the drug
| use, not because you started the drug use. (Of course
| there's also people who get addicted because they think
| it will be fun, and end up suicidal because of it. And I
| also wouldn't recommend using opiates to work on your
| mental health, because despite my two anecdotes I believe
| the almost universal knowledge in medical circles is that
| it's much more likely to worsen your mental health than
| to improve it.
| stavros wrote:
| Ah, yes, I'm not talking so much about how they start,
| but about why it's hard to quit. The short term pleasure
| is always more compelling than the long term benefit of
| not being an addict.
| swores wrote:
| But my point is that's not the only way people find it
| hard to stop.
|
| If you're addicted because your life was roughly fine,
| but you discovered that a drug make you feel amazing,
| keep taking it too much, and get to the point where
| withdrawal is so painful that it's impossible to resist
| taking another dose to feel good again, then that's
| exactly how you describe it.
|
| But if you're using heroin or whatever drug as a mental
| health treatment, e.g. because if you hadn't started
| using you would instead have killed yourself, then sure
| you'll still have the nasty withdrawals when you stop,
| but it's a totally different equation. For many addicts,
| taking illegal drugs is the only way to feel OK about
| life. Some of these people never manage to get clean, but
| the ones with this reason for addiction who do (or who
| try to) get clean, it can be surprisingly easy to deal
| with the withdrawals, because they're aware of how shit
| life was before they first started using the drug, and
| the idea that the rest of your life will be as shit as
| before you started using drugs can be a far more scary
| thought than someone who's life was basically good except
| for their getting hooked on a drug.
|
| To quote one of the all-time great TV shows, and surely
| the best about authentic portrayals of drug users,
| dealers, and cops - The Wire - Waylon, a former addict
| and narcotics anonymous sponsor, says "Getting clean's
| the easy part. And then comes life." I guess that's true
| for both types of addict I've talked about, but it's even
| more true for the addicts who turned to drugs because
| they hated their lives than for people who had lovely
| lives until they accidentally got addicted to a drug that
| they thought was fun to try.
| tacon wrote:
| Yes, that agrees with the addiction theory of Johann
| Hari, who has a TED talk and a book[0]. Experiments with
| rats show a rat will quickly be addicted when the choice
| is only between water and an opiate. But give the rat
| something other than a stark lonely existence, like
| exercise and sexual partners and rat friends, and they
| hardly use the drug. Similarly, many US servicemen in
| Vietnam became addicted to heroin while in country, but
| almost all simply stopped heroin when they were back home
| around friends and family.
|
| [0] Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the
| War on Drugs https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-
| Opposite-Addiction-Con...
| JohnFen wrote:
| I was once told that the difference between a behavior
| being an addiction or the same behavior not being an
| addiction is that the non-addicted do the thing for some
| positive physical or psychological effect. The addicted
| do the thing in order to avoid a negative physical or
| psychological effect.
|
| In this view, for example, people start using an
| addictive drug because it makes them feel good, but once
| addicted they use the drug in order to avoid withdrawal
| symptoms.
|
| Going to rehab means to stop using, which brings
| withdrawal. I think this view explains why some addicted
| would only do it when they'll incur an even greater
| negative effect than withdrawal.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Yeah and we could have a pretty interesting conversation
| on the success rates of court-mandated rehab programs.
| kranke155 wrote:
| In the cases I've witnessed, therapy would be pointless.
| They are sociopaths, pure and simple.
| brk wrote:
| Alternate anecdata: Having met people like this the initial
| incidents are usually to try and right a perceived wrong.
| Being slighted on a bonus when another employee was over-
| compensated (from the perspective of the embezzler). An
| earned sales commission that was unpaid or underpaid. Things
| like that.
|
| The embezzler spots an opportunity to get back some of what
| they are owed, they strike, and are successful. Then it
| spirals from there. Sometimes they get 'forced' to continue,
| the initial fraud case involved a fictitious vendor, or a
| subscription, or some other thing that is expected to be
| ongoing and would raise suspicious to suddenly stop.
|
| In other cases I've seen the root cause just be straight up
| drugs and gambling addictions. An employee needs fast money,
| and probably need to hide it from family members, so a little
| embezzlement gets the job done. Then of course that never
| goes the way they intended, and they wind up doing it again
| and again until the whole thing implodes.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _embezzler spots an opportunity to get back some of what
| they are owed, they strike, and are successful. Then it
| spirals from there._
|
| This strikes me as the typical fraudster more than
| embezzler. Making up the gains versus having actual profits
| that they then steal. Madoff was a fraudster; Bankman-Fried
| more an embezzler.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > Alternate anecdata: Having met people like this the
| initial incidents are usually to try and right a perceived
| wrong. Being slighted on a bonus when another employee was
| over-compensated (from the perspective of the embezzler).
| An earned sales commission that was unpaid or underpaid.
| Things like that.
|
| Altnernate anecdata (N=1): One person I knew intimately
| enough definitely used a perceived wrong as a pretext to
| start something they had been looking to do already because
| of other issues.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I agree. It might not be that the person was truly
| wronged, only that the perception that they were slighted
| can be used as a pretext to excuse their own slights
| (getting progressively less slight).
| Teever wrote:
| But you only know that you've met the ones with obvious
| defects. How can you ever know when you've ever met the ones
| with no obvious, or no defects?
| redrove wrote:
| Sounds like he was underpaid by all 3!
| duxup wrote:
| I recall some research that indicated that embezzlers are far
| more likely to think that "everyone does it" as well.
|
| That attitude is touched on near the end.
| msikora wrote:
| Casual embezzling on all levels of society was extremely
| common in communist Czechoslovakia (and probably other
| Eastern Bloc countries). For example construction workers
| might steal material from their job site to build their own
| house (often during work hours as well). There was even a
| popular adage normalizing this behaviour: "One who doesn't
| steal steals from his own family".
| duxup wrote:
| Years ago I recall a guy in Russia who documented over
| several years the continuous announcement of a given local
| road being improved. Every year trucks, supplies and such
| would show up at the appointed time, local news would show
| up with a local authorities and they'd point at things and
| film. Then the next day everything was just left in place,
| no workers, eventually each night the construction
| equipment would slowly vanish, and finally other trucks
| would come and slowly collect the supplies. Then next year
| same thing again, same spot, they'd dig up the same ground
| for TV, wash rinse, repeat.
| nradov wrote:
| Stealing from work in the USSR was so normalized that
| people just referred to at as "carrying out". Workers
| sometimes picked careers based more on how much they could
| steal than on the nominal salary. An engineer had a higher
| monthly salary than a waiter, but a waiter could
| effectively earn more than the engineer by stealing food.
|
| https://youtu.be/Jz4lD76nbds?si=iUXoDEAZI8SMJ8z4
| ein0p wrote:
| If you own the means of production, is it really
| "stealing" though? /s
| int_19h wrote:
| That's very much how it was justified. There was a saying
| in USSR:
|
| "Tashchi s raboty kazhdyi gvozd' - ty zdes' khoziain, a
| ne gost'."
|
| translating to:
|
| "Grab every nail from work - you're the master here, not
| a guest."
|
| essentially parroting the Soviet cliches about how
| proletariat was in charge etc.
| roland35 wrote:
| Not to totally discount embezzlement, but I think people
| underestimate just how poor these countries were after
| world war 2.
| Detrytus wrote:
| This was a case in Poland as well. And the reason was
| simple: communist countries were in a constant supply
| crisis. Even when you had money you couldn't just go and
| buy material to build your own house, you had to steal it,
| otherwise you'd never get your house built. That's why all
| those great construction projects of communism like
| factories, power plants, etc. were so expensive: half of
| the material never made it to a site, being stolen along
| the way.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Or as I like to say: Eastern bloc communism was often _so
| bad_ that it makes Objectivism look like a reasonable
| philosophy.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Had multiple leech brother in laws.
|
| One was a lawyer who defrauded his elderly clients and the
| other just only worked for his parents his whole life after
| getting kicked from university for cheating and then attached
| himself directly to the teat after they retired. Once his
| father died he took over the life of his mother as she was
| descending into Alzheimer's and looted her assets with the
| help of his brother before he was disbarred.
|
| Both thought that everyone else was doing it too- it was just
| about not getting caught. They literally couldn't comprehend
| the idea that others weren't just hypocrites.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > They literally couldn't comprehend the idea that others
| weren't just hypocrites.
|
| I read a book once [0] that claimed sociopaths (who come in
| more-boring flavors than just Hollywood villainy) have a
| similar confusion: Since certain norms aren't as
| intuitive/automatic, it's as if everyone else is secretly
| playing a game with a set of unspoken barely-explained
| rules.
|
| Some of them end up concluding it's all a cynical
| manipulative scam, and _everybody else_ is the same as
| themselves except absurdly dedicated to keeping up the
| fiction.
|
| [0] "The Sociopath Next Door" by Martha Stout
| spacecadet wrote:
| A friends mom always said, "There are rules, you just
| dont know them yet"
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > Since certain norms aren't as intuitive/automatic, it's
| as if everyone else is secretly playing a game with a set
| of unspoken barely-explained rules.
|
| That's exactly how I feel lol biggest reason why I
| minimize my interaction with most of the society
|
| Anyway, I think that people in general assume that others
| behave in a way similar to theirs, which works if you're
| average, but doesn't if you're not. You can see this when
| two cultures with opposing attitudes meet: both of them
| think "obviously I'm normal, it's them who's acting
| weird".
| selimthegrim wrote:
| See also _Three Christs of Ypsilanti_
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Some of them end up concluding it's all a cynical
| manipulative scam, and everybody else is the same as
| themselves except absurdly dedicated to keeping up the
| fiction.
|
| See most people who use the phrase "virtue-signaling"
| pejoratively.
| JohnFen wrote:
| "Everyone does it" is an incredibly common statement to
| justify all sorts of bad behavior, whether legal or not.
|
| I think it's an expression of the natural human tendency to
| think that our personal experiences and attitudes are
| representative of the mean.
| marricks wrote:
| It's just far more likely to get you in trouble if you steal
| from the more powerful, IMO
| namaria wrote:
| This just reads to me as a lawyer covering their ass. A blog
| post on a law firm's website saying crime pays? That's not a
| good look.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I remember a story of a bank branch manager who got into
| embezzling because of his gambling debts in this classic book
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Crime-Computer-Donn-B-Parker/dp/06841...
|
| I would not say he had a master plan but was making it up to go
| along and figured he'd win big at the track one day and pay
| everyone back, (We had someone like that who stole $750k from
| our county's bus operator because of gambling too.)
|
| Boy if these people were cogs in the machine and probably
| didn't see a lot of upward mobility. The perp told the author
| of the book that he'd "learned his lesson" and that he came
| across as sincere but FBI agents told him that people like that
| (gambling addiction + embezzling) will reoffend almost always
| if given the chance. (One reason I think the European "right to
| be forgotten" is a problem is because it is a shield for people
| who use their social skills as a weapon.)
| NortySpock wrote:
| > One reason I think the European "right to be forgotten" is
| a problem is because it is a shield for people who use their
| social skills as a weapon.
|
| Yeah, I wonder how the EU will deal with people who use that
| law to hide evidence of their misdeeds...
|
| There some people who I've only tangentially heard about who,
| while not being charged with anything, definitely left a
| trail of broken promises, messes, blathering, whining, and
| excuses in their wake. Not that such people usually get
| called out by name in a blog post, but when they say "X is
| true" online and then someone else proves them wrong, I'd
| hope they can't use that law to just sweep their foolishness
| under the rug each time.
|
| Some people need to have such things remembered, so others
| have an objective historical record, rather than only having
| subjective bluster to listen to.
| linuxlizard wrote:
| >Yeah, I wonder how the EU will deal with people who use
| that law to hide evidence of their misdeeds...
|
| Here in the US, we elect them to public office.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The other day I was testing out an input form with an
| autocomplete which led me to this group
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Solutions_for_Winn
| ing...
|
| which was run by politician Newt Gingrich which he had
| let go bankrupt and get evicted from its offices in 2011
| so he could run for president in 2012 and I must say it
| boggles my mind that he didn't think this would have an
| effect on "do I trust this guy to be President?" or even
| "do I want to donate to his campaign?"
| eadmund wrote:
| > which he had let go bankrupt and get evicted from its
| offices in 2011 so he could run for president in 2012
|
| Right now, at least, the Wikipedia article states that
| the law required him to leave the organisation. It
| doesn't sound like it was insolvent when he left, just
| that without him it found it hard to get additional
| donations. It also sounds like it was evicted after it
| was dissolved, many months after he terminated his
| relationship with it.
|
| Lacking any other details, it sounds strange to blame him
| for what happened after his required-by-law departure.
| soneca wrote:
| > _"probably didn't see a lot of upward mobility"_
|
| There was a case in Brazil recently where a medicine student
| in a top university embezzled from her graduation party funds
| (she was at the party committee) to invest in cryptocurrency,
| make profit and return the money to the fund keeping the
| profit. But she lost money on crypto. Then she tried to
| gamble (playing a lot of money on the lottery) to earn what
| she lost. Lost everything and got caught. Expelled by the
| university.
|
| She had _a lot_ of potential for upward mobility as a doctor
| from the most prestigious school in Brazil. Still did it.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _She had a lot of potential for upward mobility as a
| doctor from the most prestigious school in Brazil._
|
| _Potential_ , and after couple more years of exhaustion
| and suffering (as graduating from a medical school is
| typically only first half of the journey)?
|
| If potential far-away reward like this didn't discount to
| approximately 0 for most people, the world would've looked
| entirely different.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Strawman that indicates either extreme boredom and desire
| for interlocution, or a misanthropic streak. To see it,
| who are there all these rubes who stay in middle school
| even though most people discount far-away reward to 0?
| High school? College?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Strawman that indicates either extreme boredom and
| desire for interlocution, or a misanthropic streak._
|
| More like offering a potential counterpoint, motivated by
| general experience that people generally _aren 't stupid_
| - even the most seemingly dumb behavior tends to have a
| motivation that feels reasonable(ish) to the person doing
| it. I don't think playing Devil's advocate is
| misanthropic.
|
| > _To see it, who are there all these rubes who stay in
| middle school even though most people discount far-away
| reward to 0? High school?_
|
| Do you even remember middle/high school? Obviously, kids
| stay in it _because the law mandates so_ , and tolerate
| it because they meet other kids there and have some
| degree of autonomy over their social life. Consequences
| and rewards are both immediate.
|
| Compare with: "you need to learn because it will be
| useful for you in the future / will help you get good
| job", an argument that's well-known to work on nearly
| zero teenagers ever.
|
| > _College?_
|
| Mixed motivations, but the fact that social life gets
| taken up to 11 definitely doesn't hurt :).
|
| It's easy to keep long-term motivations in mind when
| following the path towards distant reward keeps yielding
| smaller rewards along the way. Take that away, and people
| check out or _burn out_.
| xmprt wrote:
| Most countries other than the US don't have such rigorous
| training for doctors. After graduating medical school
| (which is typically done while others are doing their
| bachelors), you have your medical license and can start
| practicing. Medical school is 6 years in Brazil as
| opposed to the required 4 years of undergrad, 4 years of
| medical school, and 3-7 years of residency (not counting
| any fellowship that you may opt to do afterwards).
|
| Which is all to say that she was right on the finish line
| before deciding to throw it all away.
| the_af wrote:
| > _Most countries other than the US don 't have such
| rigorous training for doctors_
|
| Where do you get this notion?
|
| If Brazil is anything like Argentina -- and I bet it is
| in this context -- the study and internship stages of
| doctor training are positively _grueling_. Many doctors
| in training do drugs to cope. They work long hours and
| make all sorts of mistakes. Many are in terrible moods.
| And patients and people can get really rude and impatient
| with them.
|
| It can be a really thankless, grueling job. I wonder why
| people choose it at all.
| jajko wrote:
| Momentary emotions often trump long term rational planning
| in certain types of people.
|
| Think of it as one of life's many filters - better such
| person didnt become a doctor, we wouldn't be talking about
| money being lost due to her stupidity.
| wongarsu wrote:
| In a different day and age (and with a bit more luck) she
| would have gone on to invent fractional reserve banking.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Martin Shkreli was doing that, and he actually did win big
| enough to pay back and still went to jail.
|
| SBF also will probably end up being able to pay people back,
| but it's jail for him too.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Does the right to be forgotten apply to the legal system as
| well? I thought it was more about online privacy etc
|
| Similar to how you can get criminal convictions expunged so
| it doesn't affect employment etc but any terms of the
| expungement still hold
|
| Disclaimer: not only am I not a lawyer, I'm also incredibly
| lazy and haven't even Google searched right to be forgotten
| laws
| wongarsu wrote:
| The legal system doesn't forget about you. The issue is
| more that if you google a potential business partner you
| might treat them differently if you find old articles about
| their conviction for embezzlement. Which is both good and
| bad.
|
| There is a tension between protecting the innocent and the
| reformed from their past on one side, and protecting
| potential victims on the other.
| dkarl wrote:
| Many people have a sense that they could perform much better,
| given the right opportunities, the right environment, etc. In
| software development, the thoughts might be: if only the
| requirements didn't change, if only the codebase was more
| modern, if only the architecture had been designed with more
| foresight so we didn't have to shift the architecture while we
| were adding features. If only I wasn't being held back by these
| factors, I'd be performing brilliantly. And these factors have
| nothing to do with me. So don't I deserve to be paid and
| respected like a brilliant performer?
|
| Conveniently forgetting that the people who perform brilliantly
| under actual adverse conditions have to be a lot better at the
| job, and work a lot harder, than someone who feels that they
| could hypothetically perform brilliantly under hypothetical
| ideal conditions.
|
| I've never seen someone like this turn to embezzlement, but
| I've seen them aggrandize themselves into positions of respect
| through sheer confidence and then bounce from failure to
| failure, shifting blame to other people or external
| circumstances.
| more_corn wrote:
| It's a free market fallacy. If you're good at business you can
| create value and get rich. If you play the long game you
| collaborate and take the big prize.
| xmprt wrote:
| I read this as "made more money over the course of their
| career" which is probably true because embezzlers are rarely
| stealing multiples of their salary every year. That's just too
| brazen. And even if they manage to steal 3x their salary, that
| just means they move their retirement back by 3 years. They'd
| have to repeatedly do this for 5-10 years without getting
| caught before they'd break even compared to a normal career.
| And that's before any fines and money they have to pay back.
| K0balt wrote:
| Seems like a skill issue. If they'd really apply themselves,
| they could have successful career as a corporate raider or one
| of the other many forms of embezzlement that they don't send
| you to jail for.
|
| They just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and
| stop being lazy. I mean this stuff is kinda robber-baron 101.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My method for cheating on exams was to learn the material.
| karmakaze wrote:
| All things equal, one is far more exciting:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceijkZQI1HM
| idkdotcom wrote:
| Which is not to say that every nice person is an embezzler.
|
| I was given the advice early in my career of being mindful of
| very nice people. I misunderstood it as "be a disgusting person".
|
| You need to be nice and be a honest person of integrity. That's
| the magic. Not "OR" but "AND".
| gustavus wrote:
| I think this is important. At the end of the day you have to
| live with yourself, and it's easier to live with a person who
| is nice rather than one who is mean.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| This was a piece of advice I used to often get from my parents
| as a child. Didn't really understand it for the longest time, I
| used to think "they're my friends! they're going to help me out
| too when I need it". Took a few times of getting into one-sided
| friendships to realize what they meant, nowadays anyone being
| excessively nice without a reason sets of alarms unless I know
| enough about them.
| cj wrote:
| The best engineer I ever worked with had 3 full time W-2 jobs
| remote in the US.
|
| It was really unfortunate when all 3 companies found out at the
| same time and he was fired from all 3. Not unfortunate that he
| was fired, but unfortunate that his talent went to waste.
|
| He was brilliant. But also a con artist.
|
| Edit: I was his direct manager, and when I say he "was brilliant"
| I mean that he was extremely smart, extremely good at thinking
| about architecture, all the characteristics of a great engineer,
| etc. But he simply didn't have the time to execute because he was
| secretly splitting his time between 3 companies. So he was fired
| for low productivity, even though he had all of the skills needed
| to be extraordinarily productive.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Probably should have paid him triple the salary to be the best
| engineer you ever worked with then.
| sbrother wrote:
| Nah. I know a guy who does this, he views it as a game and
| all the money coming in is his score. Tripling his salary
| would just raise his high score and he'd keep playing as hard
| as ever.
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| Isn't it, though? Why do most people work? For the joy of
| making their employer richer? Or to take home the bacon and
| make a better life for themselves and people they care
| about?
|
| I used to be the type to make loyalty to my great exalted
| employer first and foremost, sacrificing chunks of my
| personal life beyond what my salary required. Then I wised
| up and now view it as how much I can extract as quickly as
| possible. Coincidentally, the quality of my work shot up
| when I viewed myself as mostly a mercenary, consistent
| raises, consistently good reviews even though I care less
| and less. So I see where he is coming from and I wish more
| people thought like him.
| sbrother wrote:
| 100%, and I have a ton of respect for how he thinks about
| work. While I can't bring myself to do the multiple FTE
| positions thing, I've spent half my career doing
| freelance/consulting work for multiple clients at once,
| and I love the mindset since I feel like it gets to the
| core of what "work" is.
|
| In a lot of ways the "overemployment" thing comes down to
| treating full-time jobs like agency clients. Which I'm
| all for in theory and I'm a lot happier when I'm working
| with clients instead of employers. But I can't personally
| handle the dishonesty required.
| robocat wrote:
| > Why do most people work?
|
| People work for satisfaction as well as money. You even
| give your own examples of a non-financial motivation
| before you got "wise". Only caring about money sounds
| like hell to me. Look at everyone that chooses a calling
| or career that doesn't pay well like teaching or much of
| our health system. Please don't assume they are stupid
| people making bad decisions - they often know exactly
| what they are doing (e.g. my _extremely_ smart teacher
| friends) and part of their gross income is the non-
| financial payoffs of the job.
|
| Personally I think society depends strongly on people
| chasing satisfaction from their jobs, and sectors which
| only chase the money have a rather sick ambiance
| (although perhaps necessary sectors?). Every good tradie
| is proud of their work.
|
| There are a lot of taker/user jobs and bosses - perhaps
| avoiding those is the trick if you want satisfaction.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I work because it's a nice way to live. I made enough to
| retire on a long time ago. I know a (eg) fancy car isn't
| going to meaningfully affect my happiness.
|
| I've been in jobs with nothing to do. It sucks.
|
| Work is an important component of a happy life. If I ever
| get tired of software maybe I'll go garden or something.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| I'd be curious to know if he was paid any meaningful premium
| at all.
|
| "We gave him the max 5% raise" doesn't come close to cutting
| it.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| How long did he last? As if he gets a job within 2 years after
| working for a year, he is still ahead.
|
| > even though he had all of the skills needed to be
| extraordinarily productive.
|
| Why should he want to be productive? Does your company reward
| such a thing proportionally?
|
| I still think he is ahead of where he would otherwise be.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > Why should he want to be productive? Does your company
| reward such a thing proportionally?
|
| Companies rely on at least a minimum level of productivity
| from their employees. He had the skills to be extraordinarily
| productive, but he probably only needed to be 'ordinarily'
| productive, and according to GP, he was not.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Depending on how long he lasted, there could be a strong
| case for being a repeated C player.
| kevmo314 wrote:
| Since he could've been valued at up to 3x what the company was
| paying him, why doesn't that make the company the con artist?
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Well, apparently he _couldn 't_ have been, because in the end
| he wasn't actually capable of doing 3x the work.
| s_dev wrote:
| Probably the lack of lying in this specific arrangment that
| seems otherwise straight forward and honest. Also who values
| an employee based on how well they can work for other
| companies. This lad just made a bet and lost.
| kazinator wrote:
| If you actually get paid 3X, most of it goes to tax. Whereas,
| every embezzled dollar is yours.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Not nearly "most" of it, for the vast majority of us.
| DFHippie wrote:
| If you're single in the US, you have to earn over
| $578,125 taxable dollars in a year to have a single
| dollar of you income taxed at the highest rate, 37%. So
| considering only federal taxes there is no way most of
| anyone's income goes to tax in the US. The highest state
| tax bracket in the US, a quick search tells me, is 13.3%.
| In California, any dollars of taxable income you earn
| over $1 million gets taxed at this rate. So if you earn
| $2 over this threshold, the majority of these two
| dollars, rounding up, will be taxed. If you manage to
| earn enough above this threshold for the extra 0.3% tax
| to make up for the lower tax brackets you crossed on the
| way to this threshold, you are a pretty rare individual
| indeed.
| klipt wrote:
| You're supposed to declare earnings from crime to the IRS.
| Otherwise you're committing 2 crimes, which is worse once
| you get caught.
| tadfisher wrote:
| His fraudulence created an illusion that suckered 3 employers
| into paying him a salary. I don't think that implies he's
| worth 3 salaries.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Seriously though, -if- he's performing up to expected
| standards at each of this three jobs, and there is no
| conflict of interest between these companies, why is it a
| problem? The only real problem seems to be that he didn't
| disclose it--not that there was anything inherently immoral
| about taking more than one job.
|
| When someone holds down three low-paid service jobs, we
| congratulate them for working their ass off. But when
| someone on salary does the same thing, employers cry foul.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| From the original comment,
|
| > But he simply didn't have the time to execute because
| he was secretly splitting his time between 3 companies.
| So he was fired for low productivity...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Missed OP's additional edit. In that case, yea, sucks for
| him. Don't over-extend yourself!
| free_bip wrote:
| Where's the fraud if he did what was asked of him?
| ziddoap wrote:
| Evidently, he didn't.
|
| > _So he was fired for low productivity_
| free_bip wrote:
| My comment was posted before the edit. The comment made
| it seem like he was fired for working at multiple
| companies, not low productivity.
| bratbag wrote:
| He was fired for poor performance.
|
| So clearly he was only capable of temporarily pretending to
| have three times the value.
|
| Seems like startup senior management potential to me.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| In the defense and aerospace industry I've known - and continue
| to know - a number of engineers and specialists who do this.
| Leadership will often turn a blind eye, because the particular
| skill is so specialized, they'd need to give up a product line
| (or the whole business) if they terminate the guy. But, this
| being a very sick industry, they can't actually pay the guy
| more, so you get these terrible arrangements.
| Teever wrote:
| Why can't they pay people more?
| munk-a wrote:
| Stock market go brrr.
|
| Since the eighties we've generally trended towards
| executives making awful decisions in service of the great
| number in the sky - irrational and arbitrary layoffs,
| consistent undercompensation, wealth hoarding,
| underinvestment in long term profits... these are all
| common place or expected in your standard 9-5 corporate
| America job.
| Teever wrote:
| So it's not a can't but won't situation?
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Yes. If some people get more, other people will ask for
| more and the company can't ^H^H^H^H won't afford that, so
| better to lose a few individuals than pay everyone more.
| So, if you're a project manager, you sometimes need to
| turn a blind eye to make things work for you.
| Ruq wrote:
| This explains Boeing.
| coldtea wrote:
| Unless of course one steals company secrets or something,
| why do they feel the need for exclusivity in the first
| place?
|
| It's so that they are dependent on them and they have the
| leverage.
|
| It's also because no matter what he delivers and how happy
| they are with it, they always think they could have pushed
| him to deliver more, if they squeezed more of his hours.
|
| Like a crappy restaurant owner who makes the waiters also
| mop the floor or do whatever when no patrons have arrived
| yet, because they can't fathom paying them to "sit".
| ein0p wrote:
| There are pay caps that do not correspond to reality, and
| you often don't need such capable people for 40+ hours a
| week. When I consulted I explicitly told my clients that
| they do not need me full time, and I will have two clients
| add spend half of my time each week on each. I billed each
| client half my full time amount. Whether their accounting
| department knew all that is none of my business.
| nradov wrote:
| Most defense industry contracts are awarded to the low
| bidder, so contractors underbid just to continue operating.
| But then that leaves them without sufficient revenue to pay
| market rate wages to employees with the specialized skills
| to deliver on the contracts. Most defense companies still
| manage to muddle through somehow but it's messy.
| bequanna wrote:
| I don't think that's true.
|
| Most large contracts are cost-plus. Contractor direct
| costs + some agreed upon margin.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| The pay scales are locked down by two primary components:
| 1) the project contract document locks charges pretty
| severely for the project, to the point where a single high
| pay scale putting in hours will probably require a revision
| to the charges, but more importantly, 2) the owning Big
| Defense Conglomerate has armor plated pay ceilings for non-
| managerial employees - non-financial technicians are
| interchangeable cogs, that's the doctrine, regardless of
| any particular realities of skill shortage or availability.
|
| Disregard what the Overlords might tell you; 2 is way more
| important, because when it comes to 1, the military program
| offices are VERY open to revisiting the charge schedule, if
| it means they get transparency and a better chance of
| something that _might_ work. Those non-managerial pay
| ceilings were laughable _pre_ -Covid, and now it's gotten
| just surreal, still based on a flat national average of
| what they consider the job role to be, something that's
| also gotten surreal, with Kinkos employees being included
| in sw engineer pay codes.
|
| It's worsened by the fact they can't really take advantage
| of remote workers, somewhere with less CoL, in Alabama or
| Pakistan or whatever. Everything's on site, and it really
| does seem like every defense company I've ever worked is
| sited in some random shitty place where the local economy -
| if there is one - is composed of the company and three
| Applebees-like chains that service it.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Please tell me this doesn't happen in medtech too
| duxup wrote:
| I worked with a guy who had multiple jobs like that, was
| supposed to be on call 24/7 for the job that he had in common
| with me. One day he finally answered the wrong phone with the
| wrong company name when his boss was out of town and some
| director tried to contact him in an emergency.
|
| He was highly skilled, but also was not well liked by his
| peers. He knew how to suck up to no end, deflect blame for his
| own mistakes, and how to get out of work (presumably so he
| could do his other jobs) and get it dumped on others.
|
| He was hated by his peers and it was no surprise (to anyone who
| worked with him as a peer one on one) when he got caught.
|
| It was a similar situation where his skills were excellent when
| tried, but he chose to put them to use put to use to shaft
| other coworkers and honestly not do much at all / work
| elsewhere.
|
| I ran into him later and as usual he was all about the excuses
| and about how he felt the folks at the company were bad people
| and so on, but it was like everything with him, a little truism
| that he bent to mean that he should get his no matter what the
| cost to anyone.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Wait -- being fired for low productivity wouldn't require his
| multiple jobs being discovered. But you say he was fired when
| the companies found out. So they (or rather... you, his direct
| manager?) didn't notice his low productivity until they noticed
| he was working three jobs? Or perhaps you noticed but weren't
| sure what to do about it until you discovered the extra jobs?
|
| (Incidentally, I don't approve of working multiple jobs
| simultaneous like this without your employers knowing, I think
| it's unethical. But also... let's be real, many supervisors and
| companies don't in fact seem to notice or fire people with low
| productivity, and productivity varies wildly between people who
| aren't secretly working extra jobs too)
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| Being fired for low productivity is usually a long and slow
| process even in the US
|
| Having a solid reason can mean instead of PIPs etc you just
| immediately terminate
| fallingknife wrote:
| You say he was fired for productivity, but you also say he was
| fired when his employers found out he was working for all 3. It
| seems to me that the real reason wasn't his productivity,
| because he would have been fired for that without waiting for
| his employers to find out about his multiple jobs.
| coldtea wrote:
| Did he did what you asked him to do? And was that about
| creating/delivering something specific? Or did you pay him for
| sitting on a chair for 8+ hours thinking exclusively for you?
| If one hires an X and he gets the X job done, then why would it
| matter if he works in 200 other jobs?
|
| I see this edit added later:
|
| > _But he simply didn 't have the time to execute because he
| was secretly splitting his time between 3 companies. So he was
| fired for low productivity, even though he had all of the
| skills needed to be extraordinarily productive._
|
| That would be a legit reason to fire them!
|
| Or it could be a post-facto rationalization ("he worked
| elsewhere too, so he couldn't have been productive"). Parent
| already said he was fired when they found out he working at
| another 2 places, which is different from the new story that
| they saw "low productivity".
| fragmede wrote:
| It sounds like X job wasn't getting done. If one hires an X,
| and only gets .2 X, it becomes material that there are 4
| other jobs trying to happen.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Parent already said he was fired when they found out he
| working at another 2 places, which is different from the new
| story that they saw "low productivity".
|
| If someone is seems smart and skilled enough to have high
| output, but actually has low output, most companies/managers
| will spend a lot of effort and time trying to improve the
| situation. Obviously the guy is smart, so perhaps we just
| haven't onboarded him properly, or $POTENTIAL_REASONS.
|
| It might take 2-4 months before you're sure enough it's never
| going to work out. You hope things will improve.
|
| But if, during that 2-4 months, you find out the guy has
| another job, that hope disappears instantly.
|
| This is my most charitable read of what happened, and I've
| heard of cases just like this.
| e40 wrote:
| Can you say how all 3 companies found out?
| nostrademons wrote:
| There is a whole subreddit for this with 300,000 subscribers:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/overemployed/
|
| When I read the stories I question the payoff matrix a bit - it
| seems like most have 2-3 $150K/year jobs, but if you're really
| good at _one_ job and aggressively switch to the highest-payoff
| opportunities, you can easily make into the millions per year.
| But it makes a lot of sense for people that are stuck at the
| bottom of the company ranks and want to generate more
| transactions for themselves that actually result in more
| dollars.
| afpx wrote:
| I sometimes I wish I had the balls to pull something like
| that off. I'd always been transparent with my employer about
| my side work so that it was put into my employment agreement.
|
| My wife had two poor performers who she fired this year
| because they were over-employed and doing shitty work.
| hnfong wrote:
| What do you mean? There are 3 man-days each day, just enough
| for 3 jobs :D
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Scam artists have to be superficially nice to their victims
| otherwise they'll never gain their confidence.
| DudeOpotomus wrote:
| If you stop and think about it, almost every business is a scam
| of sorts that relies upon the weaknesses of human nature to
| thrive.
|
| In a lot of cases we're too lazy to do it ourselves. Or we need
| it NOW. Or we're too stupid to care or we're overwhelmed by other
| emotional factors. All these things and more impede our ability
| to make a clear distinction between value, cost and need.
|
| It's really hard to tell the difference between late stage
| capitalism and fraud. They're only divided by a thin legal line
| full of semantics and double speak. Words dont seem to have
| meanings. ie) Guaranteed, Free, Unlimited, etc. We've become
| entrapped in a web of tort law and legal ridiculousness.
|
| So in the end this guy tells it like it is... He's the known
| known, the honest thief.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| People want stuff and want to accomplish more than they have
| time to do on their own.
|
| I have no idea why you want to twist that into dark desires and
| laziness.
| DudeOpotomus wrote:
| There are entire departments at large corporations that do
| nothing but think of ways to sneak in more fees and higher
| costs. Its endemic throughout corporate Americas largest
| industries.
|
| Insurance Banking Finance Media Energy Software
|
| All are infused with opaque business practices and layers of
| legal protections hiding behind 1000 page contracts.
| mondobe wrote:
| I think it depends on what you consider a weakness of human
| nature. We're susceptible to sugary foods, even though they're
| bad for us: are bakeries frauds? If we suddenly stopped feeling
| emotions tomorrow - if we all started acting totally
| rationally, how many industries would fall apart, even though
| we're theoretically way more efficient?
|
| The same goes for our need for convenience and luxury. We could
| have all survived on brick phones or Blackberries, but we now
| employ so much of our population making slightly-more-luxurious
| iPhones. At some point, these impediments are what cause us to
| grow.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Ok I just stopped and thought about it, and concluded that this
| is BS.
|
| I'm glad that all these businesses exist, so that I can
| specialize in a particular kind of work, and they can
| specialize in doing things I don't do, and then I can transact
| with them using a standard medium of exchange to trade my
| special skills for theirs.
|
| None of that has anything to do with "the weaknesses of human
| nature" or laziness, or false urgency, or an impeded ability to
| distinguish value, cost, and need. It's just a trade of my time
| for theirs, on terms I find acceptable.
|
| There is nothing fraudulent about any of this. The coffee shop
| I bought my coffee from this morning and the restaurant I
| bought my lunch from this afternoon did not fool me, I just
| enjoyed drinking the coffee and eating the food they prepared,
| and considered their prices fair. No semantic legalities or
| double speak or meaningless words required, I just wanted some
| goods and services, and was happy to purchase them.
|
| _That 's_ honest, not thievery.
| DudeOpotomus wrote:
| You honestly feel this way about your bank, your cell
| provider, your health insurance company, your insurance
| company? When you read your bills, and see countless
| arbitrary fees, do you feel as if you're in a personal
| relationship with the service and in control?
|
| The small shop owner or tradesmen, sure. The giant corp with
| no human connection and nothing but a walled presence? No
| way.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I'd generalize this to psychopaths; it's called superficial charm
| for a reason. They can be quite nice to talk to but they don't
| have any concept of loyalty and so will betray you without a
| second thought as soon as its advantageous. The smarter ones do
| very well in large organizations.
| ilamont wrote:
| _They embezzle because they like it. They like the rush. They
| need money now, not in five years. They like being smarter than
| the drudges they figure are around them. And they embezzle, I am
| convinced, because they want to get caught sooner or later and
| that pattern is usually repeated over and over._
|
| You can embezzle for some of the reasons listed above, and not
| others. Or something completely different, like a conviction that
| the victim (which could be an employer or government agency or
| cofounder) owes you for some real or imagined damage or
| injustice.
|
| And some people do it for love.
|
| There was a case a few years back involving a nebbish CFO at an
| old-school family-run firm, Alden Shoe Company. This guy was
| utterly besotted with a former TV news anchor who was trying to
| start her own entertainment brand, and embezzled millions to fund
| her business and impress her as a moneyed knight in shining
| armor.
|
| He stole the money from a reserve account and family trust, and
| wasn't particularly smart about it:
|
| _In 2011, according to criminal and civil court filings, Hajjar
| started writing checks to himself from that Santander account and
| depositing them in his personal bank accounts. That year, he
| wrote himself eight checks totaling $585,000. The next year, 17
| checks for $1.2 million. He also transferred money from the cash
| reserve to a defunct Alden trust account, and then over to his
| personal accounts. In 2013, he used this method to take $1.2
| million, and again to steal $4 million in 2014--the same year de
| la Garza started Lucky Gal Productions. ...
|
| At the end of each year, Hajjar simply moved money from an Alden
| line of credit into the Santander account, so everything looked
| copasetic for the year-end review. Then, after a successful
| review, he returned the borrowed funds to the Alden line of
| credit and no one was the wiser that the Santander account was
| missing money._
|
| https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2021/07/13/richard-hajja...
|
| The theft totalled $17 million. He didn't try hard to cover his
| tracks, and when the CEO of the shoe company figured it out, he
| admitted it right away.
|
| I don't think this guy was a born con artist or serial grifter or
| particularly brilliant. He'd been with the same company his
| entire career, and there wasn't any evidence of earlier
| embezzlement until he met the TV personality.
|
| I think he got 5 years in prison.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Wow Alden of all places. Glad they survived it seems
| brandall10 wrote:
| Wow, I own like 10 pairs of Alden shoes/boots. I recall hearing
| something about this at the time but didn't realize it was that
| much, which I imagine is an amazing amount for them... I'd
| doubt their annual revenues amount to that much.
| gkoberger wrote:
| I don't think I really understand the takeaway of this article...
| the case wasn't really made ever that Eddie, let alone most
| grifters, are particularly nice. If anything, I think the
| takeaway is that grifters will always grift, because it's in
| their nature to find cracks in society they can use to their
| advantage. It's not about right or wrong, it's about seeing the
| world in a different way than most people do.
|
| And, since we're on HN, I think it's fascinating that many of us
| have the same mentality, except with computers/systems rather
| than people/money. (One of YC's application questions is how you
| hacked a system to your advantage.)
|
| That being said, I did find the dialogue to be quite beautiful.
| "I spent it on sweet, stupid things that make life an appropriate
| journey. Little things with some elegance attached."
| skulk wrote:
| Yeah, that brought a tear to my eye. Then,
|
| > Of course I spent it. Why else take it? Money taken like that
| should not be spent on necessities of life but on luxuries of
| life. Necessities of life are the proper destination of grim
| jobs with little men working at little desks.
|
| sucked the tear right back in.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| The is a deeper truth to this statement that you are letting
| your resentment get in the way of.
|
| Most of us live grim lives and little desks, when there is so
| much in the world to offer. We are the ones being wronged,
| not because we shouldn't do the work, but because they will
| never offer us enough to experience the other side.
| skulk wrote:
| No, that's pretty much exactly where I am with this as
| well. There are two classes of people in this world, those
| who sell their labor to live and those who live off the
| labor of others, neither because of their ingenuity or
| efficiency or lack thereof but the circumstances of their
| birth. The latter gets to enjoy all that the world has to
| offer at a baseline, and the former gets a taste of it when
| the latter deems it appropriate. This goes far beyond
| embezzlers and embezzlees, it's baked into the social
| contract itself.
| dexwiz wrote:
| I always assume embezzlers are just people who have higher
| tolerance for boundary pushing. Exploring boundaries is a primal
| urge. Kids learn to do it at a young age. If you have ever
| trained an animal, you know they do it also. To me, embezzlement
| always appears as someone who pushed "perks of the job" into
| illegality.
|
| If you are going to be a successful embezzler the lag between
| pushing a boundary (from small office supplies, to stealing petty
| cash, to full on corporate embezzlement) must be pretty long. By
| the team the punishment comes, there is enough time to disconnect
| the action from the result and create alternate justifications.
| This gives a people a long time to escalate. Being a likable
| person likely gives you even more time.
|
| In the corporate world the lines are also a bit fuzzier. Is
| expensing a not-quite business dinner with overpriced wine
| embezzlement? Depends on who you ask. But doing so will surely
| embolden your next action. These people probably also display
| some level of narcissism/sociopathy. Minimizing victims by
| calling them "small people." Nonrecognition of emotional damage.
| I wonder how many of these people surround themselves with a
| cadre of enablers who are more willing to look the other way. And
| when its all said and done, they are on to the next thing.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| I think the author is confusing "well-spoken" for "nice."
|
| Eddie can speak poetically in court. Cool. But he thinks that
| fact alone makes him better than other people. "Your courts are
| not used to hearing an honest statement, are they?" You're a
| professional con artist, bud, don't go patting yourself on the
| back for "honesty."
|
| "Necessities of life are the proper destination of grim jobs with
| little men working at little desks." This guy is a stereotype of
| a Smug Rich Villain. If a movie character talked like that, you'd
| think it was a little over-the-top.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| Maybe he's recycling some handy words from a movie or novel.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > I think the author is confusing "well-spoken" for "nice."
|
| There is at least some overlap with the meaning of "nice",
| though, as in "nice guy", where it refers to a kind of person
| who is not genuinely courteous or kind for the sake of
| another's good (the benefit for them being spiritual reward),
| but someone who does it with an ulterior motive, to get
| something (typically unspoken, as it is underhanded) in return.
| The "nice guy" is likewise a conman, because his whole
| dishonest performance is to ingratiate himself with someone, as
| if doing so entitles him to something in return (think of the
| "nice guy" who tries to please women in order to receive
| attention, affection, or sexual favors, and then either pouts
| and whines, or becomes nasty, either overtly or in passive
| aggressive ways, when he doesn't receive them).
|
| Being "nice" is not the same as being "good". We should always
| be good, never nice.
| karmajunkie wrote:
| > I pushed my cannelloni around while he expounded on the future
| of Hong Kong and when he finally wound down, asked, "Does it not
| occur to you that people want to do business with honest people
| they can trust? Not dishonest people they have to watch?"
|
| > He became exasperated. "Didn't you tell your client you have to
| create checks and balances in the company and watch each and
| every employee?"
|
| > "Yes, but..."
|
| > "And don't you insist on systems being created in every company
| so that no one can get away with cooking the books or taking from
| the company no matter who is in charge?"
|
| > "Yes..."
|
| > "Then what difference does it make if someone you don't trust
| is involved? You don't trust anyone anyway. If your systems work,
| they work. I am not any more of a danger to you than any other
| person. I don't see the problem."
|
| Eddie would have made a good security consultant.
| zelos wrote:
| The risk for the employer is (risk that an employee is an
| embezzler) x (risk that your systems fail to catch them),
| though, so you probably want to minimize both terms?
| fallingknife wrote:
| Not quite because they are correlated. As he says, embezzlers
| are smart. So lowering the second risk also lowers the first
| as a smart embezzler is not likely to try when the risk of
| getting caught is high.
| scott_w wrote:
| If I'm careful, I'm sure I could pet a tiger. If it sees me
| take enough precautions, it's less likely to try and eat
| me. If it judges that's it's worth a pop and I don't take
| sufficient precautions, I'm dinner.
|
| Or I can pet my dog that won't even think to try.
|
| Which should I do?
| spxneo wrote:
| "The brighter and shinier something or someone is,
|
| the darker and longer is it's cast."
| mrmetanoia wrote:
| That's heavy, as it can be true even without crime or hurting
| others.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| It's about time to re-read _Going Postal_ ; a fine reminder.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is well worth the read, and though it's a Discworld novel
| it can stand pretty much alone if you want it to.
|
| Once you realize just how firmly you're on the side of Moist
| and how identical Gilt is, then you can meditate for awhile on
| the world.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| _" Who are you trying to fool, Mr. Lipwig?"
|
| "Me, i think. I've fallen into good ways. I keep thinking I
| can give it up any time I like, but I don't. But I know if I
| /couldn't/ give it up any time I liked, I wouldn't go on
| doing it. Er. There is another reason, too --"
|
| "And that is -- ?"
|
| "I'm not Reacher Gilt. That's sort of important. Some people
| might say there's not a lot of difference, but I can see it
| from where I stand and it's there.
|
| It's like a golem not being a hammer."_
| munk-a wrote:
| Always keep your pink flimsies in reach in case the corporate
| ____ ever hits the fan.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Mr. Pony works at X now. Poor guy.
|
| _" He was the company's chief engineer. He'd come with the
| company, and had hung on because at 58, with twinges in your
| knuckles, a sick wife, and a bad back, you think twice about
| grand gestures such as storming out."_
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I remember that; it was a great sequel to _The Soul of a New
| Machine_.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| Reminds me of the time I spent HOURS preparing to cheat for a
| history map test in middle school, didn't pass, and realized
| later how much easier actually studying for the test would have
| been.
| kinleyd wrote:
| I had a slightly better experience. For the thrill of it, I
| spent hours preparing for a couple of test papers making a
| number of little cheat sheets in tiny handwriting. At the end
| of the exercise I found I didn't need the cheat sheets - the
| stuff had gone right into memory and I did quite well in the
| tests.
| 0x00washere wrote:
| I learned Spanish vocabulary writing words on my hands to
| cheat off of, but ended up too nervous to look at them during
| quizzes. Amazing how the desire to do well, fear of getting
| caught cheating, can turn into a hyper-powered study
| technique.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| This was basically my studying strategy throughout my
| schooling, by preparing perfectly viable cheatsheets. Got
| everyone suspiciously staring, seeing the sheets on my desk as
| I reviewed them, only for me to visibly throw them out or put
| them away right before the exam started.
| imzadi wrote:
| My study method was to try to think of questions that might
| be on a test from the material as I was reading it. I'd write
| up the questions as I went along and then write up the
| answers and study the answers. It worked great until someone
| saw my made up questions and they were close enough to the
| real questions that it was decided I had stolen the test.
| BryantD wrote:
| FWIW, the stories on this Web site appear to be fictional. I just
| read the lengthy https://www.stimmel-
| law.com/en/articles/story-13-adverse-pos... which is about a
| retired machinist engaging in boat jousts on Shaw Lake in Golden
| Gate Park. There's no trace of a real person named Benjamin
| McIsserson, and no Shaw Lake in Golden Gate Park. (It's probably
| a stand-in for Spreckels Lake, which was built for model boats
| but which has never hosted combat between them.)
|
| So take it with a grain of salt.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _There 's no trace of a real person named Benjamin
| McIsserson_
|
| I don't think this has any bearing on the whether the story
| itself is fictitious or not. I imagine all of the real names
| have been substituted in all of the stories, to prevent any
| unnecessary conflict/drama/liability/etc.
| robmerki wrote:
| Even if the story is fiction, the author has certainly come
| across the exact same type of embezzler that I have.
|
| As far as I can tell, these type of fraudsters are deeply
| wounded narcissistic people who were utterly twisted by their
| caregivers as children.
| robocat wrote:
| > narcissistic people who were utterly twisted by their
| caregivers as children
|
| Please don't be too quick to blame parents - remember we used
| to blame autism on refrigerator mothers: https://en-
| wp.org/wiki/Refrigerator_mother_theory -- society tends to
| victimise mothers and without knowing the people involved
| nasty stereotypes are unhealthy.
|
| Mayo clinic says: Although the cause of
| narcissistic personality disorder isn't known, some
| researchers think that overprotective or neglectful parenting
| may have an impact on children who are born with a tendency
| to develop the disorder.
|
| That is: parenting can be a cause but please don't jump to
| the harmful generalisation that parenting is always the
| cause.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Perhaps _Stow_ Lake?
| wglass wrote:
| Spreckels is where people run the toy boats.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| BTW Stow Lake was renamed a few months ago:
| https://sfrecpark.org/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=1696
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Fictional, or simply "Names Changed"? An awful lot of public
| stories are done pseudononymously and with the names changed
| for the simple fact that it's harder to prove libel if it's not
| talking about real people. And in this kind of legal story, you
| can bet that the persons involved are going to be quick to sue
| for libel. The linked article lends creedence to this, it
| introduces the businessman/embezzler as "Eddie Chan (not his
| real name)"
| ametrau wrote:
| He mentions in the article he uses pseudonyms. But that's an
| obvious assumption to make also imo.
| metalcrow wrote:
| Reading this story and doing some googling sadly makes me
| pretty confident that this linked one (about boat jousts) is
| fake. The ending details an explosion and there is no news
| article of that anywhere in the specified time period (which he
| says is a few months before the invasion of Iraq). Would love
| to be wrong though.
| neilk wrote:
| According to the firm that redesigned the website in 2017, Lee
| Stimmel had written over 600 articles.
|
| https://www.baydesignassociates.com/article/website-redesign...
|
| Mostly relatively dry discussions, but they do seem a lot
| better structured than the average blog post, and (thankfully)
| not AI garbage. He is a good writer.
|
| The story OP posted is tagged with "War Stories", and these do
| seem to be far more literary, with first-person perspective and
| novel-like dialogue.
|
| https://www.stimmel-law.com/en/articles/category/lessons-com...
|
| I suspect the same writer really has written all of these. It
| may be the actual person credited, Lee Stimmel, but it
| impossible to know if it's a ghostwriter without other samples
| of Stimmel's writing. But I don't think the technical details
| of the law would be well captured by a ghostwriter. There is a
| distinct change of style between both kinds of articles, but to
| me it feels like the same person writing.
| hnfong wrote:
| I'm kinda on the fence with this one.
|
| I mean, the site is apparently a real law firm in San
| Francisco, so even if it's fictional (the names definitely
| should be!), the stories are probably based on real events.
|
| Unless one of the partners has a side hobby of writing fiction
| on stories about law!
|
| The stories are fascinating though, spent a couple hours
| reading some of those.
| paulcole wrote:
| I took a bunch of meetings with the CEO of a company providing
| HR/payroll services.
|
| Super nice guy and I thought his business/offering was really
| compelling, it just wasn't right for me at the time.
|
| Like 6 months later it comes out that he had stolen like $25
| million from clients over the year (money that was supposed to be
| used to pay payroll taxes).
|
| Never would've guessed it.
| Delumine wrote:
| Definitely an english major
| mise_en_place wrote:
| That's why the writing style was so stuffy and stolid. The best
| writers are drunks, drug addicts, and dilettantes.
| dvt wrote:
| > I spent it on sweet, stupid things that make life an
| appropriate journey. Little things with some elegance attached.
| Things only worth buying because they have little value in the
| long run. Like life, itself.
|
| Feel like I can oddly relate to this quote; not sure what that
| says about me, hah.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| This story took place in the 70s.
|
| The value arbitrage corporations get from their workers today
| makes shareholders embezzling from workers just the way of the
| world now.
|
| He wasn't just charming -- he was nihilistically prescient. He
| knew where the world was going, and that other businessman at the
| end, he wouldn't survive in today's environment.
| geye1234 wrote:
| > Business may be competitive, but there are rules and it is not
| war. To Eddie, business was not only war, but war with the only
| rules being do not get caught if you can and make all the money
| you can. And trust no one.
|
| Eh, what? Don't most rich self-made people, and people at the top
| of big corps, think this way? (Not all, but a good-size
| majority?) I can assure you that the majority of such people
| worry only about the appearance of honesty and morality, not the
| substance.
|
| The 'elderly businessman' he quotes in the next paragraph has it
| pretty much right.
|
| We live in Hobbes' world. Or rather, we created it, by allowing
| such people to gain power and influence, and even seeing it as a
| good.
|
| (Btw, I'm not defending the subject's behavior, he clearly
| deserves a long spell in jail and needs to make right what he's
| done. But his argument that "everyone does it" isn't too far from
| the truth.)
| sanderjd wrote:
| > _Don 't most rich self-made people, and people at the top of
| big corps, think this way? (Not all, but a good-size
| majority?)_
|
| It's very hard to know! (It's not like you can send a survey
| around and ask.)
|
| But for what it's worth, I think this is overblown. It's not
| that it's not a thing. But I don't think it's as much of a
| thing as people tend to think. I think most people, including
| fancy business people, want to be the hero of their own story,
| and that a smaller-than-imagined proportion of people find "the
| only rules [are] do not get caught if you can and make all the
| money you can[, a]nd trust no one" to be compatible with their
| own heroes journey.
| int_19h wrote:
| Those two are not contradictory, though. One way to be a hero
| of one's own story is to demote everyone else to NPC. And
| once you do that, well, you're the _hero_ , on some clearly
| important quest ... and they're just an NPC, they don't
| really matter, so what's the big deal about sticking to the
| rules regarding them? Especially if nobody finds out?
| omoikane wrote:
| This reminds me of "All The Queen's Horses"[1], where a woman
| embezzled $53 million through careful accounting. I seem to
| recall it was mentioned how the perpetrator was described as nice
| and generous by her friends.
|
| [1] https://www.allthequeenshorsesfilm.com/
| xyzelement wrote:
| The article makes a point that for people capable of embezzling,
| the embezzling is _less lucrative_ long term than what they could
| have done legally with their abilities.
|
| I think in general there's immense power in the narratives people
| tell themselves. "I am too good/smart to be a straight-forward
| worker" can then land you in a significantly worse scenario than
| you can actually attain as a "straight-forward worker."
|
| But it's not like the ego is doing those ROI calculations.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Since what Eddie didn't understand is that people are not only
| in business for the money. Oh, it's important, but it's never
| just the money in my experience. It's a dozen other things, the
| joy of creating something from nothing, the excitement of
| success, the comradeship one gets from working in a team that is
| good and effective, etc, etc. Business may be competitive, but
| there are rules and it is not war. To Eddie, business was not
| only war, but war with the only rules being do not get caught if
| you can and make all the money you can. And trust no one._
|
| Same with most of those "good guys" businessmen he constasts him
| with - who wouldn't hesitate to exploit, take advantage of,
| backstab, pull shady or even illegal shit on competitors, cut
| margin by selling shit, and of course, fire employees whenever
| they want to look good on paper and not give a fuck about it.
|
| Like Zuck did to the Winklevoss twins and Saverin, and the
| billions of people the platform mind fucks with its algorithm to
| sell ads and collect data.
|
| Or like Bill Gates and the Microsoft he run.
|
| Or like Larry Elisson.
|
| Or like Musk.
|
| Or like Bezos.
|
| Or the WeWork guy.
|
| Or the Uber guys.
|
| The list goes on.
| jon_adler wrote:
| Reading the article, I just kept thinking of Donald Trump (as a
| "smart" embezzler).
| hristov wrote:
| Psychopaths are nice people. Well they are not nice, but they are
| very charismatic so they appear nice. They also really like
| taking risks, doing high adrenaline activities and generally
| turning things up to eleven. This adds to their charm as if they
| have a secret to enjoying life better than normal people. The
| truth is actually quite the opposite. They have a physiological
| mental problem that prevents them from feeling ordinary feelings
| and they dial things up to eleven just to get a chance to feel
| anything.
|
| To paraphrase the great writer John le Carre they do not take
| risks because they enjoy life they do it because they are dead
| inside. By the way, John le Carre had the very bad luck to have a
| psychopath for a father and he suffered greatly for it. But he
| did get a very good book out of that experience -- "the perfect
| spy", one of the best descriptions of a psychopath in literature.
| Much recommended.
|
| Unfortunately the lack of feeling translates to a complete lack
| of compassion towards others so that leads psychopaths to do so
| much damage to innocent people.
|
| In their desire to feel something anything, psychopaths tend to
| gamble and do stimulant drugs. They also tend to think they're
| special and the rules of society do not apply to them.
|
| So if you meet a charismatic person that likes to take big risks
| and do crazy stuff and/or gambles, stay away.
|
| I say that having fallen victim to a vile disgusting psychopath
| and still trying to get him to leave me alone. So beware, it is
| not fun.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Plain old narcissism. This was the charm-heavy love bombing
| phase. The contempt, the passive aggression, the "your money is
| on its way", and perhaps the outright rages would have come
| later.
|
| The real point of the interview was the reassure the narcissist
| that he was still smarter, still more significant, and still more
| of an operator than the lawyer who convicted him.
|
| At the very least he got his prosecutor to turn up, which must
| have been a small consolation thrill.
| indymike wrote:
| This story meshes with every incident of long term fraud or
| embezzlement I've seen in my business life (I've had to deal with
| four, so it is annecdata):
|
| 1. The fraudster is really, really nice and often has a disarming
| appearance. Often it's pretty or handsome. The one that got the
| most, an book keeper who got $143,000 via petty cash looked like
| everyone's Grandma.
|
| 2. The money is always spent quickly and on things that were not
| obvious to others at work. Vacations, gifts for family members,
| luxury items... One guy spent it all on guitars and amplifiers.
|
| 3. When caught, the fraudster/embezzler admits it readily and
| cooperates with everyone... The reason every one gave was right
| out of a Michael Chrichton book, "The Great Train Robbery":
|
| Judge: Now, on the matter of motive, we ask you: Why did you
| conceive, plan and execute this dastardly and scandalous crime?
|
| Edward Pierce: I wanted the money.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| "Get the money any way you can, any time you can, short-term
| thinking, everyone is a crook anyway, so what's the big deal?"
|
| Reminds me of special someone y'all know caught snoozing in a
| court room this afternoon.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > Then what difference does it make if someone you don't trust is
| involved? You don't trust anyone anyway. If your systems work,
| they work.
|
| This is where "Eddie's" argument falls through imo. Never assume
| your system works perfectly. Use every piece of supplementary
| information you have. Including knowledge of whether someone is
| willing and able to break the system.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Who doesn't like Gilligan?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _I found it incredible that such brilliant and attractive people
| would be dumb enough to risk it all for the relatively paltry
| gains that embezzlement can earn. I kept looking to see the
| underlying motivations..._
|
| In one of the Star Wars movies, Luke takes a starfighter and
| flies to another planet, pursues training with Yoda etc. I'm
| pretty sure the other timelines in the movie don't reasonably
| match up and I don't recall this causing a big hullabaloo.
|
| What people will blithely accept in a popular movie tells you
| something about their mental processes. It tells you something
| about how tolerant they will be of half-truths and stories not
| quite adding up IRL. And some people like exploiting that fact
| for some reason.
|
| They usually have an excuse -- "I'm some minority group or other
| and we never get a fair shake." But the reality is, as the author
| says, they just like it for some reason.
|
| Most people have partial info and make decisions based on simple
| rubrics, not comprehensive overviews of some unknown future.
| People routinely see what they want to see -- "Look! Free money
| -- again!" -- and blithely ignore inconvenient truths -- "Oops!
| Arrested again."
|
| Comments suggesting "right to be forgotten" is problematic are
| correct. It typically just teaches people they can get away with
| it.
| karma_pharmer wrote:
| _Money taken like that should not be spent on necessities of life
| but on luxuries of life._
|
| Sylvia Bloom, master of insider trading, disagrees.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Bloom
|
| _Sylvia Bloom (c. 1919 - 2016) was an American legal secretary.
| By copying her bosses ' investment decisions she secretly
| accumulated a significant fortune and donated the bulk of it--
| US$8.2 million--for scholarships for underprivileged students
| upon her death. She lived modestly in a rent-controlled
| apartment, and even her closest friends and family did not know
| about her wealth._
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| I'm not sure how much fiction reflects reality, but it seems like
| in every Chinese novel I read, the majority of officials are
| corrupt and greedy. The worst of them usually get in trouble, but
| a lot of them get away with it.
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