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Investigation Underway
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: In light of new developments and some progress in an investigation of Sirius ‘Open Source’ (for fraud!) we take stock of where things stand

IT hurts to know that a company which describes itself as Britain’s most respected “Open Source” company did this to us, but it did. Money laundering would be even worse, but we’re still looking into various allegations pertaining to privacy breaches, contract violations, and illegal contract-signing. To paraphrase the company’s own boss, “it doesn’t look good…”

We recently learned some additional disturbing things. They will be published here at a later date. The video above focuses on what was published yesterday. It’s one thing for an “Open Source” company to go out of business. To end up collapsing under a weight of abuse and even crime would hurt the image of Free software, including in the eyes of the British public sector (many of our clients were not private companies). This series won’t end any time soon.

Summary: 2 pension providers are looking into Sirius ‘Open Source’, a company that defrauded its own staff; stay tuned as there’s lots more to come. Is this good representation for “Open Source”? From a company that had many high-profile clients in the public sector?

THIS is taking a much longer time than initially estimated, but it has certainly progressed. The process is moving on. It’s typically like this when dealing with authorities. YMMV.

It is a very sad thing that regulatory agencies and even police are politicised to the point where one needs high-level (personal) connections, business links, bribes etc. in order to get things moving and for criminals to be actually held accountable, even prosecuted. Very sad. It should not be like this. In a functioning democratic society there’s no room for “yes, well, they committed a crime, but it’s not our problem and investigating this is ‘expensive’ to us…”

Anyway, the good news, in this particular case, is that not one but two pension providers are on the case. 2 pension providers that know Sirius. They wrote about and opened formal investigations (this week).

We’re pleased with this progress.

In additional to the letter above, which arrived 2 days ago (it is redacted sufficiently), I’ve also spoken to the manager of another pension provider (probably the third manager I’ve spoken to; some of them I spoke to 3 or 4 times over the telephone). Here is what he said some days ago:

NOW Pensions – Employer Issues

Hi Roy,

Thank you for your call today, apologies for the bad communication and service you have had from us regarding you concerns with your employer Sirius Corporation.

As discussed,.

– I will arrange for a letter to be sent to you and or email with assurances that your pension money is safe with Now Pensions
– I will alert the team that deals with your employer that the CEO is wanted for embezzlement and that he effectively scammed all his employers previously
– through a pension scheme with Standard Life
– they put on hold/review any financial requests from the company
– request what due diligence they do when acquiring employers to use NOW Pensions

Please feel free to add to the above list with any further assurances that you would like and call or email me.

Have a good evening

Yours sincerely

?????????? ???????????????

I had to remind him to make some progress, so I wrote: “Can I please have an update on this? I cannot stress strongly enough that this is a matter of great urgency, implicating many people, and we have already lost 2 months due to your slow response. Your delays have given time for fraudsters to adapt and curtail prosecution. We have evidence to prove this. ”

And again this week:

NOW Pensions – Employer Issues

Morning Roy,

I have raised your concerns directly with NOW Pensions (who deal with the employers) including your previous emails, and have chased them today, once I get the response, I will send onto you.

You did mention your wife’s NOW Pension too, due to data protection I would have to receive the request from her directly to investigate her record separately.

Yours sincerely

I politely responded as he should know we still expect some letters (promised to us in vain for several months; they kept lying about it):

Hi,

Hers is covered in the call with ??????????????? made almost 2 months ago and recorded by you. Her case is more or less the same as mine.

Kind regards,

“The plot thickens,” a friend told me, and “as I suspected, looks like your ‘pension’ money was embezzled before it even got to your pension. If that’s the case you’ll see him in court.”

I was also in touch with other victims of this fraud. We’ll be covering that in the near future.

DO not know if this is a global thing. I don’t know if that’s true only for this country or for this city. I can speak about my own area, and only my own area, for now… (based firsthand and direct experience)

When banks started to collapse about two weeks ago (about 4 banks so far, mostly in the US) it sort of started a ‘chain reaction’ and the ripples aren’t over yet. It’s a ‘domino effect’ and there’s latency, just like there was a large latency in 2008. It can take weeks or months to fully unfold. Governments intervene. Bailouts become bigger and bigger. It’s impossible to justify these. The public rebels. There’s revolt. What’s left of the media ‘changes side’ to appease angry readers. Journalists would rather not defend the rescue of thieves.

On the very same day it started (SVB, late Friday) we decided to ensure we have physical cash, just in case.

In 2020 when the lockdowns started the media kept mentioning that toilet paper was running out (of stock, at least in store). Such media reports initiated growing levels of unrest/panic. It’s a case of self-feeding loops and a self-fulfilling prophecy. It didn’t take long for people to hoard (inside their home) what was left, so stores everywhere had no toilet paper left or only very expensive brands (that fewer people were willing or capable of buying).

It seems safe to assume that right about now the maintream media would cooperate with the state to prevent runs on the banks or runs on ATMs (“cash machines” here). It’s not easy to even withdraw large amounts from one’s account in the high street branches (many branches have also shut down and repeatedly pressure people to use “apps”, i.e. do all the work for themselves). They added barriers.

Yesterday, for the first time ever, we received marketing spam/mail in the post (‘snail mail’) from a company asking if we wish to sell our home with their help. That’s rather strange if not a rude thing to be asking. One day earlier I stumbled upon an article stating that home sales have generally plunged (or people wishing to sell cannot find a buyer… not for the desired price anyway).

So one can generally see where the economy is heading…

A week ago I read that in Russia, more so after the war, many Russians hoarded physical cash. They could not trust the banking system, so they probably just wished to diversify their holdings as a failsafe mechanism (not putting all eggs in one basket). With sanctions and all, who can blame them?

I assume the media here won’t report the ATM situation, but this is a personal blog. I’ve long assumed that changing all the banknotes and coins (several years ago at relatively short notice) was about invalidating old ones to reduce the money in circulation, making it harder for people to pay with cash or even find cash (ATMs are not so easy to find anymore and those that exist are barely or poorly maintained/attended).

So here is my experience.

With the collapse of SVB I started taking money out every day or every other day. I always took it out from the ATM nearest to me. This was OK for just over a week. Then, at the start of this week, the machine ran out of 10 pound notes, so it could only dispense ’20s’ (twenties, 20 pounds). It wasn’t going to last so long and it seemed improbable they would restock it. Today, or maybe a bit earlier, the machine was already “temporarily out of order” (which means it ran out of cash; it only deals with tens and twenties). As a result I went to other machines near to me. I found 3 more of them, but 2 of them had already run out of 10 pound notes. It won’t be long until they run out of notes and basically become “out of order”. Then, the fourth machine would bear the brunt of those other 3 machines (nearest to us) not dispensing cash to people desperate to obtain some. It too would run out of cash. And fast. Maybe by tomorrow all those 4 machines (nearest to us) would have no cash left in them. Is there a plan to replenish? Maybe the government does not even want to.

And the financial crisis isn’t even over yet. It’s still young. Business transactions have been slow lately, there are many layoffs (today it’s Microsoft again), and small businesses struggle to raise funds. Some won’t be able to process payroll and issue salaries this month. They will go out of business. Nobody will come to work.

The media is trying to pacify people and one must be “ahead of the game” to react early enough; by the time the issues become widely recognised it’s already “too late” to respond to them.

Video download link | md5sum 2b863a00d74ee7980569100f280fc404
Delaying and Stalling Tactics After Fraud
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: As the phonecall above hopefully shows (or further elucidates), Standard Life leaves customers in a Kafkaesque situation, bouncing them from one person to another person without actually progressing on a fraud investigation

THE above recording is of a phonecall received from a Standard Life manager after I had requested a callback. It hopefully makes it clear that Standard Life is not progressing a case of pension fraud perpetrated by my my former employer. As I explain to the manager, this isn’t in the interest of Standard Life as it may culminate in a lawsuit soon (colleagues are speaking about it already).

As it turns out, as per Wikipedia at least, Standard Life has its share of controversies (see screenshot below) and even a lot of layoffs. If this is the level of service provided by the company, then why trust this financial institution with one’s money?

This case isn’t a personal case, as I’m informally speaking ‘on behalf’ of other people as well. Some remaining (existing) and former clients of Sirius have contacted me last week, expressing support for me. They’re very unhappy about what’s going on at Sirius, which dodges accountability. It runs away from the law, not just metaphorically.

What remains unknown, based on the processes and protocols, is whether Standard Life can be held legally accountable for effectively facilitating the company’s fraud by issuing official paperwork that serves to legitimate if not validate what was going on for over 5 years. They need to keep checks and balances in case of such embezzlement, which in this case impacted a lot of people for a very long time (in secret). We were meant to assume that the pension provider’s credibility was on the line, so when Sirius refused to respond to queries about the plan we thought, “OK, well, Standard Life would not allow this to be rogue, would it?”

Standard Life cannot simply ignore this because it’s part of it and if it’s not actively enabling the fraud, looking the other way would be regarded as “passive corruption” (formal, legal term). They make money by letting companies create accounts (they had a Sirius account) by which to mislead and embezzle staff, even for more than half a decade in the case of Sirius. The reputation is exploited to pacify people who are concerned they don’t receive any statements/updates.

It’s no secret that right now people increasingly (and already) lack confidence in financial institutions, even the Swiss ones. Why would anyone trust Standard Life in light of the experiences I’ve been having since January?

I am putting a lot of effort into it and I’ve been spending lots of time on the whole pension thing; from the appearance of things (thus far at least) it may turn out to be a scandal for 2 pension funds in the UK, not just one. By extension, this might be a problem/crisis of reputation for just any pension fund in the UK or — given the inter-connectivity of accounts across nations — in the world at large. They’re all connected; my recordings hopefully serve to demonstrate/show their apathy towards perfectly legitimate fraud reports. They already bounce me between departments in vain (“complaints”). Nothing gets done. There’s not even a reference/number.

Should we expect an increase of about 120,000 annual deaths? Is this considered the “new normal”?

uesday’s ONS figures (tomorrow around 10AM) will show if we still have infamous (major increase of about 20%) excess mortality/death levels. So far every week (for this year) looks rather bad; so far…

Official government data:

Deaths by 6 Jan 2023 14,983 compared to 10,955 in 2019
Deaths by 13 Jan 2023 17,381 compared to 12,609 in 2019
Deaths by 20 Jan 2023 15,804 compared to 11,860 in 2019
Deaths by 27 Jan 2023 14,137 compared to 11,740 in 2019
Deaths by 3 Feb 2023 13,412 compared to 11,297 in 2019
Deaths by 10 Feb 2023 12,672 compared to 11,660 in 2019
Deaths by 17 Feb 2023 12,031 compared to 11,824 in 2019
Deaths by 24 Feb 2023 11,952 compared to 11,295 in 2019
Deaths by 3 Mar 2023 12,049 compared to 11,044 in 2019

2019 total: 104,284 (first 9 weeks alone)
2023 total: 124,421 (first 9 weeks alone)

That’s an increase of more than 20,000.

Video download link | md5sum f1eb8aa87974df65f6c70839b5e0645f
Too Busy to Investigate Fraud
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The ‘Open Source’ company where I worked for nearly 12 years embezzled its staff; despite knowing that employees were subjected to fraud in Standard Life’s name, it doesn’t seem like Standard Life has bothered to investigate (it has been a fortnight already; no progress is reported by management at Standard Life)

Tuesday a week ago was when I last spoke to Standard Life after the prior Tuesday I had been given false promises regarding progress in a case of pension fraud perpetrated by my my former employer, a company that has ‘Open Source’ in its name and was one of the earliest sponsors of the Free Software Foundation, even of KDE.

It’s quickly becoming rather frustrating to see that pension providers in the UK (maybe elsewhere too, but I cannot verify this for myself using first-hand experience) prefer to not deal with serious fraud, instead delaying, stonewalling and tiring the complainants. Today I contacted Laura, a Standard Life manager, about 2 weeks after we first spoke. She said she would redirect this to a fraud investigation team, but today she says it has not really started and may take another week with another team — a subject that will be covered in the next video.

This morning we covered (also see my personal blog) how Standard Life had failed to respond to a fraud report, instead issuing false assurances that it would investigate. It’s an eye-opening ordeal.

Official ‘Standard Life’ paperwork (issued by Standard Life) was used to legitimise fraud for over half a decade

Summary: It’s starting to look more and more like pension providers in the UK, including some very major and large ones, are aiding criminals who steal money from their workers under the guise of “pensions”

THIS site isn’t about my work colleagues at Sirius ‘Open Source’. As explained this past month, this supposedly “Open Source” (not anymore!) company that was one of the FSF’s early sponsors stole a lot of money from employees, myself included. This is now a criminal matter. Several managers knew what was happening; they stole money from many of us and we will put them behind bars if possible (one of them has fled to the United States already).

The pension providers are culpable too, as we shall explain in the habitual updates (maybe once or twice per week).

Former colleagues also chase the matter. “Any progress on this?” I asked this month. “Did you file for review or something to that effect?”

As it turns out, pension providers are stonewalling. They try hard to not get involved in these crime investigations. As if ignoring the victims is a wise strategy. It’s not. It just makes them look complicit in cover-up. The person I blame the most is Leah Brown at Standard Life. For many weeks she kept saying “my hands are tied”, refusing to tell me what had actually happened. She’s a manager, so one cannot just report her to a manager. Leah Brown has made Standard Life look like part of the crime and there might be a class action lawsuit on the way. We just try to gather a list of people willing to participate in it (sharing the cost of litigation).

“Do you have contact details of other past workers?” I asked. “I’m sure quite a few had this pension and haven’t been keeping up with its status.”

Over the past month I spoke to more former workers than I can count. Some aren’t surprised by this corruption; their view of the company was already mostly negative. Most of them left years ago.

We recently found out that the exisiting CEO of Sirius (last man standing so to speak) now tries to do the job of the engineers… and is failing at it… as they left. The former CEO left too. This cheats the customers of the company as they paid for actual engineers to look after their servers. I find that situation similar to Mozilla. Maybe Madame Baker can try to develop Mozilla Firefox, but she never even did a “hello world!” program and she’s almost hitting pension age. Just like the CEO who has just left…

Did the Sirius ‘US’ (no such thing) CEO bag bribes from Bill Gates with one hand while plundering the pensions of past staff with his other hand? Stay tuned to find out… we shall get to the bottom of this. Famous last words for Sirius: we don’t need no stickin’ engineers, just some slush funds from a criminal like Bill Gates under an NDA!

Earlier this month I published “How Poorly Standard Life Has Dealt With Pension Fraud” and it cannot be stressed strongly enough that it seems like many pension companies are the same. I contacted Standard Life managers 3 times already (by phone) and I am being obstructed; colleagues tried to do the same, several times in fact, and report that they never receive a reply. They cannot even speak to anyone!

The CEO has just left the company. So who’s going to be held accountable for theft? Sirius is now, in effect, run 100% by a financial fugitive who escapes many liabilities. Any questions asked about the past are obstructed and met with stonewalling; any questions about the present, or even those who sought reassurances about the pension, are going unanswered or people are being lied to, respectively. This is a severe systemic failure.

I spoke to the company (Sirius) and so did colleagues; the company refuses to even answer very simpler questions! I still have all the paperwork from Standard Life and all the payslips to show money was ‘paid’ to Standard Life every month for over 5 years (or so they told me; it was embezzled). Recently, someone who knows Standard Life very well told me this is “theft” and my money is “stolen” by Standard Life (or in their name). I’ve already contacted the media and spoke among former colleagues about a class action lawsuit against Standard Life. It was only at that point that Standard Life started to become more cooperative. Nothing bothers Standard Life except its public image.

For several of us, some legally-savvy (I have access to an uncle who is a judge and who advised me to enroll when he heard of the Standard Life pension in 2011; back when I had lengthy discussions with him about it), the matter won’t end due to stonewalling. They cannot tire us down. My uncle feels betrayed too; it is him who convinced me to join, unlike other people whom I asked.

A the moment I am told the case is being chased by a manager called Laura Johnston (Standard Life) after escalation from Karen Liddle, who works below her level.

For the sake of transparency, here’s the latest on this:

Laura Johnston wrote on 14/03/2023 20:07:

Good Afternoon Dr. Schestowitz.

Apologies that I have not reached out before now.

Unfortunately, I don’t have anything to report so far but have reached out to the team who are dealing with this for an update.

Once I have an update from them I will be in touch.

Thank you for your patience,

I responded:

I waited for you to get back to me till 5PM yesterday and then recorded a video on this issue (as I had not heard back): http://techrights.org/2023/03/14/pension-fraud-standard-life/
More in http://techrights.org/wiki/Crimes_of_Sirius_Open_Source
and http://techrights.org/wiki/Sirius_Open_Source

I look forward to hearing of any progress. Clients of the company are contacting me, this week expressing sympathy. The company will soon have no clients and no business to even track down, so you must hurry. This really should have progressed months ago when I first contacted Mrs. Brown several times (a manager at your company). Or when colleagues sent detailed E-mails to you (those always went unanswered).

She has not responded since then (5 days have passed). She wrote “good afternoon” at 7 minutes past 8PM, so there’s a certain sense or feeling that she’s not being too honest. As if to pretend it was done within the reasonable timeframe. Remember she already failed to respond to me “today” (as she said she would 7 days earlier).

This does not look good at all for Standard Life. What should have been a trivial case of fraud (with papers and everything to prove it) isn’t progressing. Or barely (nearly 3 months already!).

Minutes ago I followed up:

Can I please have an update on this? I cannot stress strongly enough that this is a matter of great urgency, implicating many people, and we have already lost 2 months due to your slow response. Your delays have given time for fraudsters to adapt and curtail prosecution. We have evidence to prove this.

When people come to think of it, if she phoned before 5PM as she said she would, a lot of this escalation would not be needed. For instance, no person at Standard Life would be named and Standard Life itself would never be mentioned here. The bottom line is, Standard Life increasingly seems unwilling to deal with crime done in its name.

So the pattern that emerges is, pension providers lie, obstruct, and even cover up for people who abuse their system. This is really awful. On a separate day we’ll get back to NOW:Pension, another pension provider that provided awful service and isn’t progressing in the fraud investigation.

One day they may have to compensate us for all this trouble — us as in past workers who were plundered… like people who already have some other job, needing to spend weeks if not months chasing this rogue/criminal nonsense. Some former workers are very angry and some might lose sleep over it. More so knowing and seeing that the pension providers are mostly apathetic and only respond when the reputation is on the line. They don’t truly mind this ‘underworld’ as long as the media doesn’t report/talk about it.