Business Corruption and Malfeasance

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Company Refused To Pay Freelance Recruiter So He Found Jobs For 6 Of Their Top Employees & Forced The Business To Close​

According to that recruiter, who shared his story on the r/recruiting subreddit, he was able to secure a candidate in a week and because of the company’s size, made concessions on the price of his services.

After fulfilling their needs, the headhunter sent over an invoice totaling $10,000, which the owner of the business scoffed at, reasoning that “All [recruiters] do is give out phone numbers.” He offered to pay the price he thought the service was worth instead: $1,000.

Insulted by the devaluation, the recruiter declined and didn’t receive one red cent for the time he invested in helping to fill the position.

In an epic display of pettiness, the recruiter started the process of poaching six employees from the small business. He explained, “It was easy as they were all underpaid and a new manufacturing plant had just opened up 20 miles away.”

After securing new employment for the six workers, the recruiter says he was able to pocket a whopping $82,000 in fees. Ordinarily, this would have been a big inconvenience to the company in question, but in this case, the ramifications were much bigger than anyone would ever have imagined.

The day the man posted his story, the company announced they were shutting down after 33 years in business.

 

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Former Morgan Stanley exec sues company claiming he was fired because he was white​

A former Morgan Stanley executive named Kevin Meyersburg is suing the company claiming reverse discrimination, i.e. that he was discriminated against for being white.

A former executive with Morgan Stanley is suing the company for discrimination, alleging he was let go and replaced with a Black woman with “significantly less experience and qualifications” as the part of the financial giant’s efforts to meet its diversity, equity and inclusion goals.
Filed Tuesday in federal court in the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit alleges that Kevin Meyersburg was unfairly terminated this spring from his role as managing director and head of executive services after three years with Morgan Stanley. According to the lawsuit, the executive who relayed the news to Meyersburg that he was being terminated expressed “concern” about the experience level of his replacement and “could not explain to Meyersburg why the decision had been made.”…
“This is an example of DEI run amok,” Meyersburg’s attorney, Louis Pechman, told The Washington Post. “Race cannot be a factor in employment decisions, period. Full stop.”

Meyersburg’s complaint goes into a lot more detail. The basic background is that he was a rising executive at E-Trade when it was bought out by Morgan Stanley. He then began moving up at Morgan Stanley thanks to a new program he had introduced. He was very financially successful:

In August 2021, Meyersburg and McDonald met with Finn to make a presentation on the innovative Partner Referral Program that Meyersburg had developed. Finn approved a pilot for the Partner Referral Program and a new incentive compensation plan for the Executive Service Relationship Managers…
In January 2022, Meyersburg had an annual compensation discussion with McDonald.
McDonald informed Meyersburg that, based on his performance, his base salary would be increased from $240,000 to $400,000 and he would receive a bonus of an additional $400,000.

 

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Your employer is watching you! Almost all major businesses now use monitoring software to track workers' keystrokes and web searches - with JP Morgan even checking time spent writing emails when they are IN the office​

• ResumeBuilder.com found 96 percent of respondents working at firms with either a remote or hybrid model said they are subject to some form of monitoring
• Only 10 percent of those companies were doing so before the pandemic - as firms continue to commit to crackdowns for not spending time in their office
• After months of remote work, several firms have since pivoted to hybrid models - while companies like X, formerly Twitter, have nixed remote work completely

 

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Job interview 'coffee cup test' used by corporate executive goes viral: 'Manipulative'​

An executive’s "coffee cup test" for job candidates has sparked online debates as his secret evaluation method gains attention from social media users who stumble on his four-year-old interview.


Trent Innes, of Melbourne, Australia, revealed his covert personality test when he appeared on the popular business podcast, "The Venture Podcast with Lambros Photios," in May 2019, while he was a managing director at Xero, an accounting software company.

In the 16-minute podcast episode titled, "The Secret Job Interviewing Hack to Recruit the Right Staff," Innes explained that he escorts job interview candidates to an office kitchen and offers them a cup of coffee or another beverage before he moves on to questions.

Candidates who don’t offer to take their empty cups back to the kitchen at the end of their interview are unlikely to get a job offer from Innes.

 

[GURPS]

What is Going On? Three Separate Coin Shop Owners Shocked as Their Bank Accounts Suddenly Shut Down with No Reason Given​

Three separate coin shop owners have found their bank accounts suddenly shut down without any prior notice or explanation from their financial institutions.

Bank Shuts Down ‘Silver Stackers and Gold Stackers’ Shop’s Business and Personal Accounts​

An Ohio-based coin shop owner recently took to YouTube to share alarming news: His regional bank, with whom he has been a customer for years, has suddenly decided to sever ties by closing all six of his business and personal accounts.

The coin shop owner, who operates a coin shop dealing in silver and gold, received certified letters from his bank stating, “After a recent review, we have decided to end our relationship with you and close your accounts… As stated in your account agreement, we can close your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice. We will begin our closing process on September 6, 2023.”


What’s shocking is that the bank has declined to provide any reason for their abrupt decision, leaving the owner and his family in the dark. The letters came without prior notice, affecting multiple accounts, including those belonging to his children and wife.

 

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Australia’s Fifth-Largest Bank Announces Digital-Only Transactions – Will Phase Out Cash, Cheque, and Phone Payments in All 80 Branches Starting Next Year​

Australia’s fifth-largest bank, Macquarie Bank, has announced its transition to digital-only transactions. Starting from January 2024, the bank will begin phasing out all cash, cheque, and phone payment services in its 80 branches. By November 2024, all in-branch cash transactions will be completely discontinued.

“Between January 2024 and November 2024, we’ll be phasing out our cash and cheque services across all Macquarie banking and wealth management products, including pension and super accounts,” the bank said in a statement.

According to Investing.com, the bank has laid out a detailed timeline for this transition:

• January 2024: Phasing out of new checkbooks for new cash management accounts, including any linked Macquarie Wrap accounts.
• March 2024: Automated telephone banking services will be shut down, making phone payments impossible.
• May 2024: Depositing or withdrawing cash or cheques over the counter at Macquarie branches will no longer be possible. Ordering checkbooks for existing accounts will also be discontinued.
• November 2024: Writing or depositing cheques, including bank cheques, will be completely phased out. Superannuation contributions or payments using cheques will also cease.

The bank has a market capitalization of just under $69 billion and over one million retail customers.

 

[Clem72]

Former Morgan Stanley exec sues company claiming he was fired because he was white​

A former Morgan Stanley executive named Kevin Meyersburg is suing the company claiming reverse discrimination, i.e. that he was discriminated against for being white.





Meyersburg’s complaint goes into a lot more detail. The basic background is that he was a rising executive at E-Trade when it was bought out by Morgan Stanley. He then began moving up at Morgan Stanley thanks to a new program he had introduced. He was very financially successful:

He's probably better off jumping ship if they are making critical management decisions based solely on DEI. But definitely hold them accountable first.

 

[GURPS]

TikTok Faces Massive €345 Million Fine Over Child Data Violations in E.U.​

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) slapped TikTok with a €345 million (about $368 million) fine for violating the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in relation to its handling of children's data.

The investigation, initiated in September 2021, examined how the popular short-form video platform processed personal data relating to child users (those between the ages of 13 and 17) between July 31 and December 31, 2020.

Some of the major findings include -

• The content posted by child users was set to public by default, thereby allowing any individual (with or without TikTok) to view the material and exposing them to additional risks
• A failure to provide transparency information to child users
• The implementation of dark patterns to steer users towards opting for privacy-intrusive options during the registration process, and when posting videos
• A weakness in the Family Sharing setting that allowed any non-child user (someone who could not be verified as a parent or their guardian) to pair their account to that of a minor's, which made it possible for the adult user to enable direct messages for child users above the age of 16

In addition to the financial penalty, the DPC has ordered TikTok to bring its processing mechanisms into compliance within three months.

 

[GURPS]

MGM Resorts Hackers Broke In After Tricking IT Service Desk​

• Okta warned about hackers using similar techniques in August
• Group suspected of attack is well known for social engineering

David Bradbury, chief security officer at the identity and access management company Okta, said his company issued a threat advisory in August about similar attacks against some of its customers, in which hackers used a low-tech social engineering tactics to gain entry and then more advanced methods that allow them to impersonate users on the networks.

Okta’s advisory warned that hackers were tricking IT service desk staff into resetting multifactor authentication settings enrolled by “highly privileged users.”

At that time, Bradbury said his staff wasn’t sure who was behind the attacks. But in the weeks since then, he said “all signs are pointing” to a group known as Scattered Spider, the same outfit suspected of hacking MGM and Caesars Entertainment Inc. in recent weeks. Okta has been assisting MGM, a customer, in its response to the attack, he said. Okta also counts Caesars as a client.

 

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FTC Names Three Amazon Executives in Suit Over Prime​

The FTC alleges that Amazon had a purposefully complicated cancellation system for Prime members that internally was code-named “Iliad” after the ancient Greek work by Homer. The epic poem is notoriously hard to read.

“The FTC’s decision to add three Amazon leaders to its civil case against the company is unwarranted under the facts and the law,” said an Amazon spokesman. “To claim that their efforts were made in anything but the utmost good faith is unfounded and represents a radical departure from the FTC’s own standards for such claims.”

“We’ve always made it clear and simple for customers to sign up for and cancel Prime, and we look forward to demonstrating that the FTC’s claims to the contrary are wrong” the spokesman said.

 

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“The secrecy surrounding the proceedings is unprecedented in antitrust trials,” Carnegie Mellon professor Diane Rulke declared, and the Times’ “other antitrust experts” also “described the proceedings as unusually opaque, adding that the government’s antitrust case against Microsoft more than 24 years ago was far more accessible to the public and the press.”

One of secrecy’s more destructive aspects is it invites speculation about what’s being kept secret.

One possibility is that a more open approach would reveal just how closely Big Tech firms like Google have been working with the federal government to shape public opinion and even influence elections.

(Apple and Microsoft have joined Google in trying to keep this litigation under wraps.)

Former Popular Mechanics editor and expert conspiracy-theory debunker James Meigs notes in City Journal this is no conspiracy theory: Newly released documents show White House and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials working hand in hand with tech companies and social-media platforms to censor views and reports about COVID and its origins that turn out to have been true.

Google’s video platform, YouTube, even removed a “roundtable discussion in which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis discussed COVID policy with a group of scientists,” including Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya.

The sin: Some experts doubted the benefits of masks for small children.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently found that government officials engaged in an extensive program of coercion to censor search and social-media results.

And this paper’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop just before the 2020 election was censored across many platforms.

Twitter (now X) didn’t even allow users to share links to it via direct message.

Of course, perhaps Google is just embarrassed about things it does to make its products addictive, as Roszak bragged; that’s the sort of thing that got tobacco companies in trouble, after all.

And there’s certainly plenty of that going on in the tech sphere.

As I wrote in my book “The Social Media Upheaval,” not only do tech firms go out of their way to make their products addictive, one of the companies consulting on those techniques is actually called Dopamine Labs.

Well, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Over the past few years, huge tech companies like Google have assumed enormous economic and political power, often working hand-in-glove with unelected bureaucrats to suppress political opposition.

What is Google hiding in its unprecedentedly secret antitrust trial?

Judge Amit Mehta made it public which involved a Google vice president bragging about how “addictive” the search giant’s services are, comparing them to tobacco and illicit drugs.

nypost.com

 

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Report: Amazon made $1B with secret algorithm for spiking prices Internet-wide​

• Amazon's algorithm code-named 'Project Nessie' allegedly generated over $1 billion in revenue and led competitors to raise prices, according to sources.
• The algorithm aimed to deter other online stores from offering lower prices, tracked competitors' prices, and adjusted Amazon's prices accordingly.
• While Amazon officially stopped using Project Nessie in 2019, other pricing algorithms may still be in use.

 

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Last week, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, alleging that the online retailer was illegally maintaining a monopoly. Much of the FTC's complaint against Amazon was redacted, but The Wall Street Journal yesterday revealed key details obscured in the complaint regarding a secret algorithm. The FTC alleged that Amazon once used the algorithm to raise prices across the most popular online shopping destinations.

People familiar with the FTC's allegations in the complaint told the Journal that it all started when Amazon developed an algorithm code-named "Project Nessie." It allegedly works by manipulating rivals' weaker pricing algorithms and locking competitors into higher prices. The controversial algorithm was allegedly used for years and helped Amazon to "improve its profits on items across shopping categories" and "led competitors to raise their prices and charge customers more," the WSJ reported.

The FTC's complaint said:

Amazon uses its extensive surveillance network to block price competition by detecting and deterring discounting, artificially inflating prices on and off Amazon, and depriving rivals of the ability to gain scale by offering lower prices.

The FTC complaint redacted this information, but sources told the WSJ that Amazon made "more than $1 billion in revenue" by using Project Nessie, while competitors learned that "price cuts do not result in greater market share or scale, only lower margins," the FTC's complaint said.

"As a result, Amazon has successfully taught its rivals that lower prices are unlikely to result in increased sales—the opposite of what should happen in a well-functioning market," the FTC alleged.

Amazon stopped using the algorithm in 2019—for no clear reason, sources told the WSJ.

FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar told the WSJ that the agency wants more public access to redacted information in the complaint and continues to "call on Amazon to move swiftly to remove the redactions and allow the American public to see the full scope of what we allege are their illegal monopolistic practices.”

Report: Amazon made $1B with secret algorithm for spiking prices Internet-wide

Report reveals details about Amazon's secret algorithm redacted in FTC complaint.

arstechnica.com

 

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Google Nukes ‘College Terror List’ Naming Students Who Support Hamas​

Google appears to have swiftly censored a list of students named as supporters of Hamas this week after the Palestinian terror group launched the deadliest attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.

Users who try to access the “College Terror List” posted on a Google site are taken to a 404 error page less than 12 hours after the page was posted.

 

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Victoria's Secret has now figured out that being political isn't good for business, and is now pushing away its hyper-feminist message after it resulted in a "significant revenue drop," according to Fox News. Instead, it's now going to move back to being the sexy lingerie it's known for:

As such, it has looked to revamp itself and bring back "sexiness," the outlet noted in a piece that was also published by editorial partner CNN on Tuesday.
Cathaleen Chen reported that the brand’s efforts to promote inclusivity – which included making LGBTQ pro women's soccer player and outspoken leftist Megan Rapinoe, as well as a transgender woman, brand spokesmodels and getting rid of its famous "Angels" supermodels – gained "favorable reviews from online critics [but] never translated into sales."
According to the numbers, the lingerie brand’s projected revenue for 2023 is $6.2 billion, which is 5% lower than it was last year, and even lower than 2020, when the brand’s revenue was $7.5 billion.
The drop in Victoria’s Secret’s sales also followed the company’s move to make its board of directors mostly female.

Through the influence of U.S. women's soccer player and radical leftist activist Megan Rapinoe, Victoria's Secret took on the idea that they focus too much on the male gaze and that the company's message to girls was "really harmful" and focused on "patriarchal, sexist, viewing not just what it meant to be sexy but what the clothes were trying to accomplish through a male lens and through what men desired."

Listening to Rapinoe ended up being a mistake.

Victoria's Secret Ditches the Woke to Stop Going Broke, Will Embrace 'Sexy' Again

redstate.com

 

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Listening to Rapinoe ended up being a mistake.

Here's to hoping she never modeled lingerie.

 

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Unsettling reason McDonald’s iconic clown was quietly phased out​

As the face of one of the world's largest fast food chains, Ronald became a celebrity in his own right.

But like any international superstar, he couldn't escape controversy.

Which is why McDonald's decided to slowly phase out the red wig-wearing clown back in 2016.

Despite him being firmly ingrained in the DNA of the company, bosses were forced to gradually distance themselves from Ronald for a disturbing reason.

If you cast your mind back to seven years ago, you might remember a bizarre trend that was sweeping the globe.

And I'm not talking about the Mannequin Challenge or campaigning for justice for Harambe the gorilla.

You may recall when the world briefly went mad and killer clowns began running amok around the time of August 2016.

People began sporting terrifying clown costumes and sharing their spooky snaps online to promote a horror movie which was due to drop two years later.

But the craze created mass hysteria rather than hype for the film, as obviously some took it too far.

It began in the US state of Wisconsin and soon clown copycats from across the world began cropping up.

What originally started as a bit of harmless fun turned into a real life horror story, when the clowns craze took a dangerous turn.
A family in Florida was attacked by a group of 20 people wearing clown masks.

The Sun also reported a person in a clown mask who allegedly pulled out a knife and started running after a boy on his way to school.

 

[GURPS]

Google, DOJ still blocking public access to monopoly trial docs, NYT says​

According to The Times, there are several issues with access to public trial exhibits on both sides. The Department of Justice has failed to post at least 68 exhibits on its website that were shared in the trial, The Times alleged, and states have not provided access to 18 records despite reporters' requests.

Google's responses to document requests have also been spotty, The Times alleged. Sometimes Google "has not responded at all" to requests to review public exhibits. Other times, Google responds, but "often does not provide the exhibit in its entirety," The Times claimed, including limiting public access to "particular page(s) of the exhibit shown to a given witness."

The Times has asked the court to intervene and expand public access to key evidence weighed in what's "arguably the most important antitrust trial in decades, with far-reaching consequences for the future of the tech industry."

This is just the latest attempt to stop the Google antitrust trial from being shrouded in secrecy. Just before the trial, advocates lost a fight to get the court to provide a public access audio stream of the whole trial. Then shortly after the trial began, Google tried and failed to reduce public access to trial exhibits by requesting an opportunity to review every trial document before the DOJ posted anything online.

 

[GURPS]

We Know Return to Office Mandates Backfire — So Why Are Tech Giants Like Amazon, IBM and Zoom Reinstating This Outdated Policy?​

Let's start with some baseline data. According to the Scoop Flex Report for September 2023, an astonishing 94% of Fortune 500 tech companies offer at least a hybrid or fully remote work model, leaving a mere 6% in the draconian era of full-time office work.

This finding is confirmed by a groundbreaking research paper — "The Evolution of Work from Home" — by economists Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloo and Steven J. Davis. Based on their survey, the tech sector leads the pack in flexibility, with an average of 2.6 work-from-home days per week.

What about the future? As part of the July 2023 Survey of Business Uncertainty, fielded by the Atlanta Fed, Barrero, Bloom, and Davis asked U.S. business executives about the work-from-home outlook at their own firms. The survey responses cover about 500 firms distributed widely across industries, states, and firm size categories. Specifically, they asked: "Looking forward to five years from now, what share of your firm's full-time employees do you expect to be in each category (fully in-person, hybrid, fully remote) in 2028?" Executives anticipate modest increases over the next five years in both the fully remote share and the hybrid share.