[HN Gopher] How to Make Millions as a Professional Whistleblower
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How to Make Millions as a Professional Whistleblower
Author : mooreds
Score : 95 points
Date : 2024-09-15 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gq.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gq.com)
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| That's cool as hell, but also it seems weird that his biggest
| fear is merely being exposed and not able to do it no more.
|
| You'd think he'd maybe be afraid of a more...extralegal ending
| giving the wake of wealthy ruthless people he's Richard Overing
| alwa wrote:
| It does seem like an awful lot of risk to take on personally,
| without institutional cover. Mess with a cop and you'll feel
| the full weight of the justice system, mess with this guy
| and... I guess he knows a lot of lawyers?
|
| I feel like there was a lot left unsaid in this account, and
| rightfully so. There's a conspicuous void in the shape of his
| recording techniques (or lack thereof), for example; ditto the
| specifics of the types of malfeasance he goes after.
|
| And while I'm all for maintaining honest norms, it did sound a
| little bit like he was trying actively to bait his mark into
| producing fraudulent misrepresentations. That feels a little
| different from the conventional "whistleblower" notion, of a
| cog in the machine noticing something wrong and standing up for
| what's right. Something a little closer to vigilantism.
|
| But who knows. It's cool that he was willing even to share this
| much visibility.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| > it did sound a little bit like he was trying actively to
| bait his mark into producing fraudulent misrepresentations
|
| Being a whistleblower only works well if you uncover a scheme
| that the target already has deployed to victimize other
| people (or the government). Entrapment isn't an effective
| tactic.
| rectang wrote:
| The vigilantism aspect is a guilty pleasure when reading this
| -- with the IRS being deliberately defunded to facilitate tax
| cheating I read about this guy and hear in my head "this is
| the hero we need".
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The IRS vilification is gross.
|
| I had a relative who was a revenue agent with a couple of
| highly specialized areas of expertise. When he started in
| the mid-80s, his unit had about 250 agents nationally. When
| he retired circa 2010, there was 4.
|
| He retired earlier than he wanted because the travel was
| difficult and he was developing some health issues. The
| cases they prosecuted were people cheating society out of
| hundreds of millions, or in one case, billions of taxes. He
| characterized the scope of what wasn't even _looked at_ as
| 15k cases annually where at least $10M of taxes were notn
| paid. They didn't even bother to think about anything less
| than $100M.
|
| We should be vilifying the people doing this. Some of these
| crooks avoid taxes equivalent to 10,000 or more well paid
| professional like myself and my colleagues. You also have
| issues with some cases where the tradition of allowing
| Senators to nominate US Attorneys and hyper-political
| judges means that certain crimes are effectively not crimes
| in certain districts.
| photonthug wrote:
| You explained yourself the same problem that you're
| trying to dismiss. The vilification will continue until
| the emphasis is placed where it needs to be, ie going
| after big fish instead of little ones, regardless of
| which fish are easy targets and easy wins for enforcement
| quotas, and regardless of whether the enforcement team is
| 4 people or 4000.
| rectang wrote:
| I'm confused. It seems like "They didn't even bother to
| think about anything less than $100M" describes "going
| after big fish instead of little ones".
| photonthug wrote:
| Yeah but then it's explained why catching the big fish is
| hard, and a plea for sympathy due to staff cuts. That
| won't work until/unless tax enforcement overall shifts
| from disproportionately affecting the poor to
| disproportionately affecting the rich, regardless of some
| special team of four people that targets big fish.
|
| The situation that we actually have is like if a one
| stoplight town is setting a speed trap because they need
| revenue.. but they target only old broken minivans going
| 5mph over, because they know corporate trucks and private
| red sports cars going 20 over the limit are more likely
| to have lawyers that buck the speeding ticket, and cost
| the town revenue instead of collecting it. Is adding more
| cops to pull over more old minivans really going to help
| the town buy a public park, or stop sports cars from
| speeding? It's not only unfair, but also completely
| ineffective.
|
| Staffing/funding is always going to be a bullshit
| complaint because structurally, enforcement quotas and
| complex compliance requirements are always going to tend
| to create a preference for bureaucracies to punch down at
| soft targets. Similar to how militarizing police doesn't
| actually help fix problems with law enforcement, adding
| additional "support" (ie weapons) for other institutions
| that have fundamentally broken politics/policies is not a
| good idea.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You read it wrong and frankly don't get it. With the
| limited resources they have, it only makes sense to
| pursue the most egregious offenders for complex crimes.
|
| Enforcement is like fixing shipped code - expensive and
| difficult. Effective enforcement shapes people's risk
| assessment and behavior. You need to work the middle of
| the bell curve so that people believe there's risk.
|
| It's funny... the people who push the "starve the beast"
| agenda want to "back the blue", as long as they are
| looking in the direction they prefer.
| photonthug wrote:
| > With the limited resources they have, it only makes
| sense to pursue the most egregious offenders for complex
| crimes.
|
| With few resources the wrong people are targeted and I
| think that's well established
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2023/01/29/the-
| irs-...
|
| With more resources, there's every reason to believe that
| more of the wrong people will be targeted. Why would you
| believe otherwise?
| jonathanyc wrote:
| > They didn't even bother to think about anything less
| than $100M.
|
| I got a letter from the IRS for ~$300. I'm pretty sure
| the first letter was sent by some automated system of
| theirs with a bug, and the subsequent letters were some
| IRS employee trying to cover their ass.
|
| Here's the sequence of events.
|
| - IRS: You misreported your gain on this one specific
| trade.
|
| - Me: I checked and the trade is listed with the amounts
| you claim on the broker's 1099-B that I sent to you. Here
| are the 1099-Bs with the transaction highlighted.
|
| - IRS: We've already seen your 1099-Bs. Please prove to
| us the amounts sum to the aggregate.
|
| - Me: Here is a spreadsheet showing all the transactions
| and the sums.
|
| - IRS: OK OK. What about this other totally unrelated
| transaction then that is now being mentioned for the
| first time?
|
| With every single reply, the IRS took months to respond.
| Each reply was literally just one sentence. They sent me
| periodic form letters just saying "we're working on a
| reply" because apparently there's some law saying they
| are required to reply within some number of days. The
| phone number they provided for me to call was literally
| just an automated system.
|
| The unrelated transaction was for a huge amount on some
| stock I had not traded at all. At this point a friend
| referred me to a tax lawyer who told me to just pay the
| $300 so the IRS would stop harassing me. Paraphrasing the
| lawyer: "my rate is a lot higher than $300."
|
| This incident turned me against the IRS. I'm sorry about
| your relative but I have no hesitation vilifying them.
|
| In contrast, the CA DMV once sent me a letter asking for
| $300 because a vehicle's old registration hadn't been
| cancelled. It was a hassle but every time I called in I
| got a human being, and on the last call the collections
| person saw the error in their database and fixed it on
| the spot. Frustrating but not malicious. The IRS on the
| other hand...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You're an easy mark to hit a quota. Thats unjust.
|
| I'm not a defender of the IRS. I've worked for my share
| of large corporate and government bureaucracy. They are
| dumb organizations if you design them to be. The folks
| who have controlled the purse at the committee level in
| congress want that org to be dumb.
|
| I've consulted for a few DMVs. Fundamentally, they are
| tax agencies. They sell stickers and plates. They are
| unique, however, as they are one of the few state level
| organizations that directly interact with the entirety of
| the public. They often do a mediocre job, but they see
| themselves as customer service orgs and make effort to
| give you a positive experience. Most states have
| governance structures where individual legislators cannot
| micromanage agency functions as well.
| zie wrote:
| The IRS has been chronically under-funded for decades.
| They probably are not trying to be malicious, they are
| just over-worked and can't keep up. Their software system
| is many, many decades old and their staffing shortages
| are chronic.
|
| Congress just recently decide to throw the IRS a bone and
| let them hire a few more people, but they are still
| chronically under-staffed.
|
| Every time I manage to find a real human at the IRS, they
| have always been awesome to deal with. If you want to get
| a real human, the best way is to go to your local
| congress critter and have them contact the IRS _for you_.
| If more people do this, it also helps incentivizes
| Congress to eventually properly staff the IRS.....
| hopefully.
| fracus wrote:
| This isn't how I would define whistleblowing. This is more like
| mercenary stings.
| Animats wrote:
| _" If he sees people posing on Instagram with yachts, say, or
| cars that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, while also
| trying to raise money, he says, bells immediately go off." ...
| It's rare, Overum says, that you'll go long without hearing from
| a target that turns out to be running a scam. "They always need
| money," he says. "They're always running short on cash."_
|
| Ah. That's a good method of target selection.
| neilv wrote:
| A lot of the detail in this story seems tailor-made (ha) for the
| upscale fashion image that GQ sells to its advertising targets.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Yeah I wonder how much they get paid for product placement
| relating to the watch brands mentioned.
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