Summary: Sirius ‘Open Source’ is likely to have committed very serious fraud and criminally stolen money from its workers; today we expose some of the more preliminary findings from a 3-month investigation
THIS part of the series is “long in the making”, so to speak. It took many long calls, distant contacts, meticulous correspondence and subsequent analysis to prepare. Today we present more of an overview and some time soon — likely later this week — we’ll release a lot of audio. It’s hard to tell how long this sub-series will be as that’s highly dependent on numerous leads. The short story is, Sirius isn’t denying the allegations. These allegations are very serious and the consequences profound (like several years in prison). Sirius is now existing on “borrowed time”; the CEO left very recently and the so-called ‘founder’ is in hiding. He works double shifts, trying to salvage what’s left of the company he claims to have founded (we doubt this, based on documents presented here before).
The index at the top explains how this relates to a pension provider, which we had no choice but to publicly name (and shame). I sent them about 10 E-mail messages, but I never received a reply or a phonecall as I asked (I said this was very urgent — not a lie by the way!). It seems they’re rather afraid of this case, fearing perhaps that it’s a major liability in light of various scandals (which I explained to them in very clear terms several times so far this year).
So far we’ve involved close to 10 people in three pension providers. Many people are aware of this case, including a pension provider that has some past as a client of Sirius. We decided to make complaints only after all other avenues had been exhausted and advised people to transfer pensions in order to secure them from future fraud.
In the process we did manage to get numerous letters, including formal documentation. We started chasing the pension providers, insisting that they need to cooperate (get reply or shame them, unfortunately, for basically covering up fraud). After several pension checks (not the Tracker) we could finally see disparities; where the money vanished is less of a mystery over time, as we assume that the company might as well have used pension payments in payslips to deceive staff. That’s a very serious crime. And to compare to statements, as per the formal balance, means that the discrepancies become evident.
As it turns out, others experienced the same thing. “I emailed the office a few years ago, xxxxxxx responded,” to quote one former colleague, and xxxxxxx “said xxxxxxx would try and find out but never did.”
“If you saw the other stories,” I responded, “you’ll see that a lack of response in Sirius says a great deal. That says a lot and [is] so very typical!”
When it comes to the pension lapses, I had to escalate 4 times before even receiving any response at all (a face-saving reply). This is covered in detail. The same is true for paylips that stopped coming.
“xxxxxxx is employed to cover up for xxxxxxx,” I said. “That’s xxxxxxx actual job. Lots of examples of that.”
New material will emerge while we prepare future parts of the series, but the cat is out of the bag and we’ll report any progress with the ongoing inquiry, which has been preliminarily escalated to the police. If it’s not progressing, we should open a case and report to the Pension Regulator as well. Some of them are too slow to act and we cannot wait for too long because Sirius will be bankrupt soon.
The company itself is trying to hide. The CEO of Sirius has just left, so time is at the essence. Just before he left, or one month ago, I sent the following message: “Please provide the full address to send legal papers to. Not the address of the accountant of Sirius or the address of your accountant (which you also registered your business with). Failing to provide the full, real address will result in further escalation and potentially class action lawsuit, with former employees involved and clients fully informed. I shall expect a reply by Tuesday, February 7th.”
Sometimes they pretend that the E-mails they don’t like to receive simply got “lost in the mail”, so I asked later on: “Any response? Did my message get lost in your ‘spam box’? Again? I’ll give you until end of Tuesday.”
He left the company some time later, without uttering a single word. If they are still not answering very simple E-mails, we should consider a class action lawsuit. They know they did something, so they try to keep quiet, hoping not to give away any clues.
Half a day ago I asked the last remaining chief if what the pension provider tells me is true. I wrote:
Dear xxxxxx,
I spoke to numerous managers at xxxxxx for 3 months. They reached the conclusion that myself and colleagues never had any money deposited there — money taken for “Pension” off of our salary, as per the payslips for 5+ years. This suggests pension fraud and an actual crime. I assume, moreover, that yyyyy (as Director and spouse) was fully aware of this. In the name of journalistic integrity I must first ask you if this is patently false — a chance for you to comment in your defence. A lack of reply can be interpreted as implicit admission of guilt.
To paraphrase what you said in a call back in November, “it doesn’t look good.”
This message was received but not answered; it’s not a “no comment” per se but a refusal to even comment or issue a self-defending statement. Due to the nature of the job, he certainly saw that message and chose to hide. E-mails to the address of the departing CEO are bouncing (from Google oddly enough! Is it outsourced as well?), so they’re not even routing E-mails to the former CEO. Is anyone left to run the ship?
In the above message it is noted that yyyyy was a spouse of the ‘founder’ and a Director at the time, so she knew what was going on and she, unlike her former husband, is based in the UK and isn’t a fugitive in the US. Can she too be held accountable?
The last CEO, who bullied my wife, left very recently. He probably knew nothing about this (or wasn’t complicit) because he was not inside the company at the time, but maybe he could see paperwork or was given verbal memos about this taboo subject. Maybe the inquest has, in its own right, motivated the departure (fear of being held accountable when a real address was pursued).
In the above, the main point is, they hide and they do not reply to any email that doesn’t serve their interests — a years-old issue.
In the next few parts we shall present hard evidence (audio also) of the crime. Unless managers at a very large and reputable pension provider lied to me (which is improbable; too risk for them to do this), the mini-series may become rather long (already close to 10 parts). It should be noted that so far we’ve only scratched the surface. We have a lot of recorded material to publish and we shall work with British authorities on this matter.
Filed under: 
The gist of the video above is (it mended up a bit like a podcast of the pension fund’s manager and myself), they now reckon they failed to provide a good service, they recognise the severity of the matter, and things will — or at least should — be progressing a lot faster from now on.
recently became aware that money had been stolen from me. It was confirmed to me some days ago. I decided to report this to the authorities; failing to do so may result in any remaining money vanishing from the thieves’ account. The video above does not go into the details of the case (like