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Victims of Open Source Charlatans
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Summary: Following today’s part about the crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ another video seemed to be well overdue (those installments used to be daily); the video above explains to relevance to Techrights and how workers feel about being cheated by a company that presents itself as “Open Source” even to some of the highest and most prestigious public institutions in the UK

Summary: Crimes committed by the company that I left months ago are coming to light; today we share some reactions from other former staff (without naming anybody)

TODAY we take a look at the nature of the crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’, what pension providers are saying, and what former colleagues say about the company upon realising that it is corrupt (spoiler: some aren’t even surprised).

We shall start with the pension providers, with focus on Standard Life (the other provider has not even responded yet!) as about 6 hours after I complained about it (and made this meme) Standard Life contacted me by E-mail to say: (days late already)

Dear Dr Schestowitz

Thank you for your email.

We are carefully considering the concerns you have raised. I’m sorry if the time this is taking is frustrating for you, but we believe it is appropriate given the situation.

I will be in touch with you again as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

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

Complaint Consultant

This does not say anything concrete. It has been like this since March 7^th and we’re soon in April. Sirius is running out of clients, i.e. out of revenue stream. How long must one wait? When it comes to Standard Life, the interactions over the telephone go back to January. Why does this take so long to progress? What does that tell us about the pensions/financial sector (Standard Life is a giant in this sector)?

About a month ago I said to the company, Sirius: “I spoke to numerous managers at Standard Life 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 [wife] (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.””

There has been no response since. None. They know they’re guilty. Days later I wrote to say: “You did not respond. I assume you have nothing to say in your defense. My E-mails to [CEO] are bouncing, so I assume he wants nothing to do with the company anymore. A month ago you failed to provide a physical address for the company. Now it is moreover headless (the CEO left). [PA] is still based in the UK and E-mails to her are not bouncing, so I will assume she is best point of contact.”

Still no response. The company is totally unable to defend itself, but will enforcement and prosecution follow? If not, the same people can commit the same crimes again, without any consequences. Are we living in a state of anarchy where businesses and managers can defraud staff and then just refuse to even communicate? Are we living in a state of affairs where pension providers and police can just look the other way, even when presented with hard evidence of the crimes?

“You are choosing not to reply,” I said to them. “It does not improve matters. For neither of you. [PA] was fully aware of what had gone on because: 1) colleagues asked her about this pension (even years ago) and she did not get back with an answer. 2) she was at the company in the years of that pension scheme and she was involved in what seems to be deliberate embezzlement of funds, along with both [wife] and you.”

So at least 3 people in management are legally liable. Two of them are still in England, whereas one is ‘in hiding’ in the US. Hiding in some basement with a rib shirt on.

When will authorities do something on this matter? How many hours on the phone are required for action? How many E-mails? So far we’re talking about 30 E-mails and 6 hours over the telephone. That’s just counting my own role, not colleagues’.

“I’ve already proceeded to legal consultation on this,” I told them. “If I receive no reply by Monday, we (myself and others who are impacted; I spoke to a lot of former staff) shall escalate and potentially file a class action lawsuit, pressing charges along criminal lines (possible extradition after warrant of arrest). The pension provider is also on the case, at the managers’ level. They’re very unhappy about what happened.”

This was a while ago. Notice the ultimatum: “You need to correct what has happened and we’re still open to a settlement/compromise to avoid another escalation (after Monday, 13th of March).”

Days passed since it first became clear that the company had committed a crime. The CEO vanished (left abruptly) and then deleted any connection he ever had with the company. Even a few days after the 13^th of March. The company also finally (belatedly) removed us from its pages. There must be a bit of a panic, knowing they engaged in fraud for over 5 years and are finally being investigated for it.

“Our money was embezzled,” I told other victims. “[wife], [husband] and [PA] knew what they were doing. They never paid to Standard Life the money they specified in our payslips (management at Standard Life told me this). We need to sue the company while it still exists to hold them accountable. Some lawyers would agree to do this for a percent of the money awarded rather than per hour spent. Will you join us? I spoke to a lot of past staff.”

Depending on the outcome of the investigations (yes, plural), we’ll proceed sensibly. If the company cannot pay for its crimes, the pension provider/s will.

One other victim noted: “Have you got any details confirming it was embezzled [...] Shouldn’t we be able to make a claim against Standard Life / the IFA for never notifying us money was transferred or wasn’t being paid?”

I still have everything on record (audio) and full names of two managers I spoke to. It’s rather well documented, not just what I made public. I am no expert when it comes to pension-related laws, but the other victim may be right. It may be possible to hold the pension provider accountable too. They never ever contacted us.

So anyway, the pension series might turn out to (at least!) have some educational value; all this time-wasting will turn into “making a point” at a time when people don’t trust financial institutions anyway. It might also become a class action lawsuit, in case stolen money can still be recovered (we’re taking about potentially 50,000 pounds or a lot more; it’s hard to assess until we know all the victims).

Having been in touch with other potential victims, it seems clear they’re rather disturbed by the discovery and very sympathetic towards other colleagues. Been a long time since we last spoke in some cases, but they’re still around and they still recall the Sirius pension. “I left Sirius a few months ago and the CEO left days ago,” I told them. “Turns out the company plundered people’s old pensions (2011), so this likely affects you as an employee.”

Back then we didn’t yet have it confirmed that the company committed crimes, but it seemed clear it was being verified and soon validated. I asked: “Did you have a pension with the company at the time? A bunch of us are grouping, as the company apparently committed a crime.”

For the sake of privacy/confidentiality, I won’t name anybody here. But their responses are telling.

One of them said: “It has indeed been a long time! How are things with you? I’m still working remotely: turns out it’s a thing now :)”

Yes, working from home is definitely a thing now. Some of us still do that.

“I didn’t have a pension with Sirius,” a former colleague told me, as “I was only there [redacted] months or so and never got it arranged – but if they raided your pensions you definitely should chase it up. Good luck with your case!”

My wife and I both left when the company had gone rogue. I will continue to chase the pension’gate’ even if just to show how pension providers respond to such matters. Spending so much time on the telephone over 3 months is indicative of institutional failure far broader than Sirius itself.

“I’m shocked (although not totally surprised) to hear that,” another former colleague told me. “Are you talking about [boss]? I hadn’t realized they’d moved to America…”

They didn’t. He’s hiding there after taking some cash from the Gates slush fund (under an NDA!) while tricking all staff to sign an employment contract they never saw before, joining a shell valued at one pound without being properly informed. This in itself is very likely illegal, as we noted here before. The former colleague told me: “I didn’t have a pension (nor even an employment contract!) so don’t have any skin in this game but keep me posted on how you get on.”

So even back then the company had staff with no “employment contract!”

“Sorry to hear that!” said another former colleague. “I honestly don’t remember. I’m currently traveling, but will check my docs and let you know tomorrow! Thanks for the heads up…”

A lot of workers were so ‘ad hoc’ that they didn’t realise what was going on. Even their alleged “pension” was basically a fraud.

We’ll keep abreast of any updates and publish them as deemed suitable.

Fraud investigations in the era of bankers going rogue

Summary: Based on our experiences and findings, one simply cannot rely on pension providers to take fraud seriously (we’ve been working as a group on this); all they want is the money and risk does not seem to bother them, even when there’s an actual crime associated with pension-related activities

THIS site isn’t a personal site (unlike my personal blog and personal site, schestowitz.com), but the issue seems commonplace and it impacts workers in “tech” (in my case, my former employer was an early sponsor of the Free Software Foundation).

I wanted to just post a quick update to say that 2 days ago I contacted two pension providers regarding their ongoing investigations of actual fraud. I wrote to them:

Is there any concrete progress on this yet?

This back-and-forth inquiry with your staff has gone on since January.

We’re fast approaching April and former Sirius staff does not want to be left aside as “April’s fools”.

The company is rapidly losing clients and may soon have key evidence in its shredders. Please progress this ASAP, even if there are not many of us and Sirius is not a large company.

We need action, not merely acknowledgements.

45 hours have passed and not even a reply from them!

One of the pension providers has not yet delivered what it promised it would send. The other has been mostly sitting on it for 3 weeks already. So what’s going on? Is this how Britain’s pension industry deals with fraud?

Sirius, the company, is ‘in hiding’ and it is losing customers (we kept noting escalation would follow for failure to provide a real address; it seems possible they not only squandered many people’s pensions but went even further). How long will it take for pension providers to take action? Will they wait until the company goes bankrupt? It might be too late by then. At a later stage we’ll explain why such delays can implicate the pension providers, making them partly accountable/complicit.

Sirius wasn’t always this rogue. Those pension providers too used to be more trustworthy, even putting their logos on athletes’ uniform to earn some trust (as if football is a badge of integrity). At one point Sirius had its logo on the jerseys of a young people’s football team (photo above), but that was a very long time ago. Nowadays it seems like the CEO of Sirius can barely even afford a shirt. Last time he held a company meeting he was wearing a rib shirt. No kidding.

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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.

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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.