#corporate crime

[wilwheaton]

Boeing and its 737 are a textbook case. In October 2018 and March 2019, two crashes of an earlier version of the Max 737 killed 346 people, and grounded the planes for nearly two years. The disasters were ultimately traced to design failures in the model’s flight control software info that was not conveyed in its guidance to pilots, not to mention the Federal Aviation Administration, even though executives knew about it. Yet repercussions were almost nonexistent. A midlevel functionary charged criminally was acquitted by a jury in a matter of hours. It took the better part of a year — and two embarrassing days of congressional testimony — for Boeing to fire then-CEO Dennis Muhlenberg. The Trump administration ultimately decided to fine Boeing $2.5 billion for not informing the FAA about software changes that contributed to the fatal airline crashes, while deferring a criminal charge against the company. For Boeing, the fine effectively amounted to a business expense. The government even declared the company’s failure and misconduct “not pervasive,” a huge favor to a company facing massive lawsuits from victims’ families. Given this farcical excuse for accountability, it’s no surprise that the trouble didn’t stop for Boeing and the Max 737’s manufacturer, Spirit AeroSystems. The Lever reported Tuesday morning that a federal securities lawsuit filed last year against Spirit alleges “widespread and sustained quality failures,” including pressure on employees to downplay “defects.” And according to the Financial Times, last year Boeing itself flagged Spirit for improper installations and badly drilled holes on other 737s.

Boeing’s midair blowout is just a symptom of a much deeper rot

“For Boeing, the fine effectively amounted to a business expense.”

When I heard about this blowout on the 737, my first thought was, “this was caused by corporate greed and cutting corners, because Republicans have eviscerated accountability in corporate America.”

There is no satisfaction in learning that I am likely correct, just the grim knowledge that they’ll probably tighten some screws, but the rot at the core of the danger will be left untouched.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Microsoft put their tax-evasion in writing and now they owe $29 billion

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

If there's one thing I took away from Propublica's explosive IRS Files, it's that "tax avoidance" (which is legal) isn't a separate phenomenon from "tax evasion" (which is not), but rather a thinly veiled euphemism for it:

https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files

That realization sits behind my series of noir novels about the two-fisted forensic accountant Martin Hench, which started with last April's Red Team Blues and continues with The Bezzle, this coming February:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

A typical noir hero is an unlicensed cop, who goes places the cops can't go and asks questions the cops can't ask. The noir part comes in at the end, when the hero is forced to admit that he's being going places the cops didn't want to go and asking questions the cops didn't want to ask. Marty Hench is a noir hero, but he's not an unlicensed cop, he's an unlicensed IRS inspector, and like other noir heroes, his capers are forever resulting in his realization that the questions and places the IRS won't investigate are down to their choice not to investigate, not an inability to investigate.

The IRS Files are a testimony to this proposition: that Leona Hemsley wasn't wrong when she said, "Taxes are for the little people." Helmsley's crime wasn't believing that proposition – it was stating it aloud, repeatedly, to the press. The tax-avoidance strategies revealed in the IRS Files are obviously tax evasion, and the IRS simply let it slide, focusing their auditing firepower on working people who couldn't afford to defend themselves, looking for things like minor compliance errors committed by people receiving public benefits.

Or at least, that's how it used to be. But the Biden administration poured billions into the IRS, greenlighting 30,000 new employees whose mission would be to investigate the kinds of 0.1%ers and giant multinational corporations who'd Helmsleyed their way into tax-free fortunes. The fact that these elite monsters paid no tax was hardly a secret, and the impunity with which they functioned was a constant, corrosive force that delegitimized American society as a place where the rules only applied to everyday people and not the rich and powerful who preyed on them.

The poster-child for the IRS's new anti-impunity campaign is Microsoft, who, decades ago, "sold its IP to to an 85-person factory it owned in a small Puerto Rican city," brokered a deal with the corporate friendly Puerto Rican government to pay almost no taxes, and channeled all its profits through the tiny facility:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

That was in 2005. Now, the IRS has come after Microsoft for all the taxes it evaded through the gambit, demanding that the company pay it $29 billion. What's more, the courts are taking the IRS's side in this case, consistently ruling against Microsoft as it seeks to keep its ill-gotten billions:

https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-microsoft-audit-back-taxes-puerto-rico-billions

Now, no one expects that Microsoft is going to write a check to the IRS tomorrow. The company's made it clear that they intend to tie this up in the courts for a decade if they can, claiming, for example, that Trump's amnesty for corporate tax-cheats means the company doesn't have to give up a dime.

This gambit has worked for Microsoft before. After seven years in antitrust hell in the 1990s, the company was eventually convicted of violating the Sherman Act, America's bedrock competition law. But they kept the case in court until 2001, running out the clock until GW Bush was elected and let them go free. Bush had a very selective version of being "tough on crime."

But for all that Microsoft escaped being broken up, the seven years of depositions, investigations, subpoenas and negative publicity took a toll on the company. Bill Gates was personally humiliated when he became the star of the first viral video, as grainy VHS tapes of his disastrous and belligerent deposition spread far and wide:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/12/whats-a-murder/#miros-tilde-1

If you really want to know who Bill Gates is beneath that sweater-vested savior persona, check out the antitrust deposition – it's still a banger, 25 years on:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/revisiting-the-spectacular-failure-that-was-the-bill-gates-deposition/

In cases like these, the process is the punishment: Microsoft's dirty laundry was aired far and wide, its swaggering founder was brought low, and the company's conduct changed for years afterwards. Gates once told Kara Swisher that Microsoft missed its chance to buy Android because they were "distracted by the antitrust trial." But the Android acquisition came four years after the antitrust case ended. What Gates meant was that four years after he wriggled off the DoJ's hook, he was still so wounded and gunshy that he lacked the nerve to risk the regulatory scrutiny that such an anticompetitive merger would entail.

What's more, other companies got the message too. Large companies watched what happened to Microsoft and traded their reckless disregard for antitrust law for a timid respect. The effect eventually wore off, but the Microsoft antitrust case created a brief window where real competition was possible without the constant threat of being crushed by lawless monopolists. Sometimes you have to execute an admiral to encourage the others.

A decade in IRS hell will be even more painful for Microsoft than the antitrust years were. For one thing, the Puerto Rico scam was mainly a product of ex-CEO Steve Ballmer, a man possessed of so little executive function that it's a supreme irony that he was ever a corporate executive. Ballmer is a refreshingly plain-spoken corporate criminal who is so florid in his blatant admissions of guilt and shouted torrents of self-incriminating abuse that the exhibits in the Microsoft-IRS cases to come are sure to be viral sensations beyond even the Gates deposition's high-water mark.

It's not just Ballmer, either. In theory, corporate crime should be hard to prosecute because it's so hard to prove criminal intent. But tech executives can't help telling on themselves, and are very prone indeed to putting all their nefarious plans in writing (think of the FTC conspirators who hung out in a group-chat called "Wirefraud"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Ballmer's colleagues at Microsoft were far from circumspect on the illegitimacy of the Puerto Rico gambit. One Microsoft executive gloated – in writing – that it was a "pure tax play." That is, it was untainted by any legitimate corporate purpose other than to create a nonsensical gambit that effectively relocated Microsoft's corporate headquarters to a tiny CD-pressing plant in the Caribbean.

But if other Microsoft execs were calling this a "pure tax play," one can only imagine what Ballmer called it. Ballmer, after all, is a serial tax-cheat, the star of multiple editions of the IRS Files. For example, there's the wheeze whereby he has turned his NBA team into a bottomless sinkhole for the taxes on his vast fortune:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

Or his "tax-loss harvesting" – a ploy whereby rich people do a "wash trade," buying and selling the same asset at the same time, not so much circumventing the IRS rules against this as violating those rules while expecting the IRS to turn a blind eye:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

Ballmer needs all those scams. After all, he was one of the pandemic's most successful profiteers. He was one of eight billionaires who added at least a billion more to his net worth during lockdown:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/billionaire-bonanza-2020/

Like all forms of rot, corruption spreads. Microsoft turned Washington State into a corporate tax-haven and starved the state of funds, paving the way for other tax-cheats like Amazon to establish themselves in the area. But the same anti-corruption movement that revitalized the IRS has also taken root in Washington, where reformers instituted a new capital gains tax aimed at the ultra-wealthy that has funded a renaissance in infrastructure and social spending:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/03/when-the-tide-goes-out/#passive-income

If the IRS does manage to drag Microsoft through the courts for the next decade, it's going to do more than air the company's dirty laundry. It'll expose more of Ballmer's habitual sleaze, and the ways that Microsoft dragged a whole state into a pit of austerity. And even more importantly, it'll expose the Puertopia conspiracy, a neocolonial project that transformed Puerto Rico into an onshore-offshore tax-haven that saw the island strip-mined and then placed under corporate management:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#que-viva-albizu

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[serialunaliver]

I swear Monsanto is always in some shit

[thefugitivesaint]

While the media has been happy to parade around the notion that there's an "epidemic of shoplifting" plaguing retail stores, a premise that has been demonstrated to be factually incorrect and exaggerated, they have basically ignored widespread wage theft by those very same retail companies (take, for instance, Bob Nardelli, the former chief executive for Home Depot, screaming about "organized gangs" of shoplifters while on tv while Home Depot settles a class action lawsuit over wage theft to the tune of 72.5 million dollars and McDonalds pays out 26 million dollars for the same. These are just two notable examples, the latter from 2019.) How "crime" is framed and discussed matters for a host of reasons I'm not in the mood to expand on here at the moment but I will say that corporate theft is a topic that I rarely hear addressed in any detailed and sustained form by most media outlets. A quick addendum: back in 2018, a ruling from the Supreme Court in 'Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis', made class action lawsuits against employers harder by weakening workplace protections for employees. I'm being lazy here in my presentation so I suggest you do a more rigorous accounting of this subject on your own.

[scarlettmarlens-blog]

All I hear about it’s corporations “losing billions” and “gaining billions” but where is all this fucking money. Thousands of people are losing their jobs for ai, and everyone I know seems to want to kill themselves than work. New big store manager now and my coworker told me the last store manager apparently had a budget for employees bonus gift cards and no one saw a cent of that. We get a block of chocolate at Christmas as thanks as the higher ups get thousands in bonuses bc of profits and the profit come from us working our asses off so they can cut hours and add work. People spend more an purses than I make in a year and we’re the people that NEED the actual money to live. I can barely afford to feed myself while ceos make more money than they can dream of spending. They fucking invent new ways to blow the cash they have for funnies while still having enough to give their great grandchildren. IM SICK OF THE WORLD GETTING WORSE EVERYDAY. Everywhere I turn I see new articles about laws getting repealed, actively making shit worse! Years of hard fought progress thrown in the trash by the most greedy bigots, voted in by the most anti intellectual manipulated bigots. I hate this. I try to keep my fucking head down and do the work to survive but I’m furious!! And helpless to make any change. There are millions of people that share my view but even they can barely make a dent in it all. Why why why why why can’t things just be fair. And even if there is rich people why does it have to come at the cost of common people having to decide if they’ll eat or go to the doctors.

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇲 🚨

SIX DRUMS FILLED WITH TOXIC CHEMICALS DEPOSITED BY NORTHROP GRUMMAN FOUND BURIED IN CANCER-PLAGUED LONG ISLAND TOWN

📹 Six 55-gallon drums filled with toxic chemicals, and encased in concrete coffins, some broken, were found buried under Bethpage Community Park in cancer-plagued Bethpage, a town on Long Island in New York State, which was deposited by U.S. military contractor Northrop Grumman.

Previously, the town of Bethpage had to contend with a 6-square mile toxic plume of hazardous waste resulting from Northrop Grumman's dumping of chemicals underground in the area.

At least one of the 55-gallon drums was found punctured, and some contained flammable chemicals.

The drums were found buried just 4-feet underground, underneath the Park's baseball field which was previously abandoned more than 20 years ago due to concerns over soil contamination.

According to a report in New York Post, a layer of clay was found under the drums, where authorities believe chemicals could have seeped into the ground.

Oyster Bay Supervisor, Joseph Saladino, called on authorities with New York's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to clean up the park by collecting all the contaminated soil and removing it from Long Island. The community's tax payers previously paid $20 million to clean up the site to allow local residents to use the Park's skating rink.

Saladino also filed a lawsuit against Northrup Grumman 10 years ago to reimburse the community's costs for the cleanup, while a new lawsuit was filed in December to order the further cleanup and removal of the toxic soil.

Local residents have been complaining of higher cancer rates in their community for years, arguing that surrounding communities have far lower rates to their own, while the DEC claimed the discovery posed "no immediate threat to public health."

Still, local residents say they're fed-up, continueing to call for the immediate removal of toxic substances, along with demands for a full soil excavation in the park.

“I’ve had it. I’ve had it. I’ve been working on this for over 20 years as a New York state Assembly member and now as the supervisor of the fourth-largest town in America and I’m not going to sit by idly,” Saladino is quoted as saying.

Northrop Grumman, for its part, said it continues to work with the DEC to address the situation.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[z0mbi3-s0krat3s]

AMERICAN PSYCHO #1 (OF 5) upcoming comic covers RELEASE DATE 10/11/23

See Patrick Bateman's infamous New York City killing spree from a brand new perspective as a familiar character from the film is revealed to be much more than they appeared. Witness the greatest hits of Patrick's murderous rampage while exploring new revelations in the world of American Psycho, in this story that'll make fans see Patrick's bloody story through a whole new lens.

This limited series also begins the journey of an all-new psychopath as social media obsessed millennial, Charlie (Charlene) Carruthers, goes on a downward spiral filled with violence. Drug fueled partying leads to bloodshed as Charlie leaves a trail of bodies on her way to discovering the truth about her dark nature.

[redshift-13]

United States Reaches $37 Million Settlement Of Fraud Lawsuit Against Cigna For Submitting False And Invalid Diagnosis Codes To Artificially Inflate Its Medicare Advantage Payments

...

Exhibit #562,344 - Corporate Executives Enjoy Broad Immunity for Large-Scale Crimes

To state the obvious - Cigna didn't commit fraud, people within Cigna did.

But tonight the protected felons in Cigna are eating dinner at home and will go to work tomorrow and take home their bonuses at the end of the year, and the year after that.

Another recent Cigna scam got them sued in California, which requires Cigna to actually examine medical reimbursement claims, not toss them aside.

Cigna health giant accused of improperly rejecting thousands of patient claims using an algorithm https://apnews.com/article/cigna-california-health-coverage-lawsuit-4543b47cd6057519a7e8dc6d90a61866

The company used an algorithm called PXDX, shorthand for ''procedure-to-diagnosis,” to identify whether claims met certain requirements, spending an average of just 1.2 seconds on each review, according to the lawsuit. Huge batches of claims were then sent on to doctors who signed off on the denials, the lawsuit said. “Relying on the PXDX system, Cigna’s doctors instantly reject claims on medical grounds without ever opening patient files, leaving thousands of patients effectively without coverage and with unexpected bills,” according to the lawsuit.

"Improperly rejecting thousands of patient claims" is an anodyne description, technically true, but it belies the accurate characterization of this crime - grand theft against 100s of thousands of people. Even the generic categorization of Cigna as a "health insurance company" has an obscurantist function - it masks the actual public health and economic function of the company, which is to generate profit for executives and shareholders by rationing care for millions. Reduced and simplified further, Cigna harms public health for profit.

Even when they're not committing crimes, wealthy Cigna executives make yet more money by trying to load up their customers with medical debt by finding ways to "legitimately" deny claims. This may not be illegal in many cases, but if you're fine with this normalized plunder directed against you, a systematized and blatant scheme to transfer wealth to shareholders, you might want to think again.

David Cordani, Cigna CEO

Cordani is being lavishly rewarded by forcing large numbers of people into medical debt and bankruptcy:

His nearly $21 million package for 2022 comes with a $1.5 million salary, the same he's recorded since 2020. He brought in $12,644,278 in stock awards and $2,900,029 in option awards. Non-equity incentive plan compensation totaled $3,600,000, according to Cigna Group's proxy filing.

[brain-salad]

[ausetkmt]

Poverty, Politics and Profit (full documentary) | FRONTLINE - YouTube

Many people have no idea why there is such a huge wealth gap in america. This gives us a brief peek into the reality of classism and financial disinfranchisement.

This is not a game, and we as people who are victimized by this scheme have asked until we are blue in the face. Now we get a look behind the financial curtain. We are not locked out - we are PLANNED OUT

Today we help you understand why the dollar is worth less in the hands of POC. There is a lot of money circulating but it's not being directed to your circles; Find out Why by Watching this

[tcpresearchproject]

Hello everyone!

My name is Grace and I am an undergraduate psychology and criminology student at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. I am currently completing a research project on the relationship between true crime and personality. I would really appreciate it if you could take some time to complete this survey, it should take no longer than 10 minutes. This survey is completely anonymous, with more information on the first page of the survey. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions and you are welcome to share this with your friends and family.

Thank you!

[cliff-montgomery]

Fukushima Nuclear Plant Has History Of Crisis Management Failures

By Cliff Montgomery - Apr. 17th, 2024

It doesn’t appear to have been much discussed in the U.S., but in February the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant mistakenly leaked “about 5.5 tons of water containing radioactive materials” into the Pacific Ocean, according to the Xinhua News Agency, the state-owned news service of the People's Republic of China.

“It is estimated that 22 billion becquerels of radioactive materials such as cesium and strontium are contained in the leaked water,” stated the Chinese news source.

A becquerel refers to “one of three units used to measure radioactivity,” according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Simply put, it “refers to the amount of ionizing radiation released when an element (such as uranium) spontaneously emits energy,” thanks to “the radioactive decay (or disintegration) of an unstable atom.”

The release of 22 billion units of such stuff sounds like quite a lot … Xinhua certainly thinks so.

“The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), claimed on [Feb. 7th] that [the] monitoring of a nearby drainage channel did not show any significant radiation level changes,” noted the news service.

But, asked Xinhua, “this begs the question: What constitutes a ‘significant’ level?”

The Fukushima nuclear power plant has had its series of disasters. On March 11th, 2011, the plant experienced the severe blows of the now-infamous magnitude 9.1 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck Japan. That one-two punch destroyed a number of its reactors, allowing radiation leaks to contaminate the surrounding area. The plant is being decommissioned.

But “nearly 13 years after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami,” pointed out the Chinese news service, “recurring leaking incidents still hint at the utility’s mismanagement and the Japanese government’s inadequacy in overseeing it.”

“The leak on [Feb. 7th] stemmed from a valve left open during cleaning operations,” stated Xinhua, while “on Oct. 26, 2023 … two men were hospitalized after being accidentally splashed with radioactive liquid at the plant.”

“The deficiencies in the fundamental equipment raise questions about the potential for similar occurrences,” stated the news service, “and whether TEPCO [the firm that owns the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant] conducts regular inspections of its equipment.”

“While TEPCO this time claimed that there is no risk to the public and that the surrounding environment remains unaffected by the leak,” Xinhua deftly pointed out that “its history of cover-ups and opacity has eroded public trust.”

“For instance,” continued the Chinese new service, “it took TEPCO over two years after the 2011 tsunami to acknowledge that radioactive tritium had leaked into the Pacific Ocean,” an admission that contradicted “its initial assertions that the toxic water had been contained within the plant’s premises.”

“Also, in February 2015, TEPCO admitted that since April 2014,” Xinhua continued, “it had been aware of radioactive substances from a rainwater drainage ditch linked to one of its buildings” leaking into the Pacific Ocean every time it rained.

A quick review of the Fukushima plant’s history reveals that such carelessness has been a hallmark of the facility from the very beginning.

“The worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown never should have happened, according to a … [scientific] study,” declared the University of Southern California (USC) news service USC Today back in 2015.

The study, spear-headed by researchers from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the Middle East Technical University in Turkey, found that “ ‘arrogance and ignorance,’ design flaws, regulatory failures and improper hazard analyses doomed the coastal nuclear power plant even before the tsunami hit.”

You would think U.S. citizens might be interested in learning about all this, if they were ever given the chance to read or hear about it. Such a media omission is America’s corporate press in a nutshell - working hard to protect its corporate friends by maintaining a convenient silence.

[hezigler]

Wage Theft Is A Much Bigger Problem Than Retail Theft - SOME MORE NEWS

The greatest failure of our democratic republic is that of the fourth estate.

[soultrekkingmovies]

The Fall of the House of Usher (miniseries)