It’s finally out (hours ago).

Note: The pension fraud would require investigating that shell abroad. 3 entities are deep in debt.

Summary: As noted the other day, Sirius ‘Open Source’ was eerily quiet or inactive and there was nothing for July until today (the very last day of the month) regarding its finances (e.g. balance sheet and headcount); the company still claims to be based where the accountant is (still the same accountancy) and the losses deepened last year, with only 166 pounds in the bank, a massive decrease in net assets, and debt growing by 20% (up until October 31^st, i.e. a month before both my wife and I resigned, followed by several senior colleagues). This was only “[a]pproved and authorised by the director” today; the company claims to have “7″ member of staff, but that was a year ago and it’s a lot less now. As it turns out, selling out to Bill Gates and playing to the tune of Microsofters who dox employees was a big mistake Microsoft had attempted this years prior], as usual).

“Netscape hired me to represent their interests, and when I announced this, controversy ensued. Which is a nice way of saying that Microsoft went berserk; tried unsuccessfully to get me fired as co-editor, and then launched a vicious, deeply personal extended attack in which they tried to destroy my career and took lethal action against a small struggling company because my wife worked there. It was a sideshow of a sideshow of the great campaign to bury Netscape and I’m sure the executives have forgotten; but I haven’t.”

–Tim Bray

Video download link | md5sum af2ede5cedf3d71835d542e233f4bb36
Liars in Charge
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ will be covered here about once a week and today’s video deals with the last part, which explains a history of lying and perhaps infidelity too

HE attempts to compel the British government to hold Sirius accountable for financial crimes won’t end soon. The British government was the biggest client of Sirius, so there’s an incentive to bury it all under some rug somewhere.

We recently made the decision to slow down a bit and issue progress reports once or twice a week. Many victims deserve to know what’s happening and what was happening since 2011 (12.5 years ago; it may have started sooner, but I hadn’t been there yet).

There is no very clear outline at the moment, but we have about 10 more steps to go through and a lot of information in the pipeline. The above video mostly sums up what we covered earlier this week.

Partners in crime

Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ are a subject we’ll likely cover for a long time to come (probably next year too) because they unearth a bunch of other scandals, both at home and abroad

THE place where I worked for nearly 12 years (I resigned this past December) and where my wife worked for over 9 years (she too resigned) is a bonfire or a dumpster fire at the moment.

We have a lot of things left to say, but we intentionally throttle it all down to about once a week (maximum effect and modest progress when there’s no rush or hurry). There’s a lot of new material in the pipeline already and the goals are specified clearly.

“These aren’t audited because of the size of the business, but an audit can be demanded.”Some time around 26/7/2023 (ish) there will be a financial disclosure here (obligatory) and maybe there too. It was July 26^th last year (usually late July). These aren’t audited because of the size of the business, but an audit can be demanded.

We’ve meanwhile been contacted by one of the criminals, who is trying to induce guilt for seeking law enforcement, i.e. possible jail time for the perpetrators. Guilt-tripping like this isn’t a novel method; others tried it on us before. The main perpetrator, with his wife as an accomplice^*, will be chased until justice is done. They were victimising my colleagues and I, both men and women, for over half a decade. We didn’t find out until this year.

Apropos, in today’s Daily Links we included this new post entitled “Enabling financial crime”. To quote:

This will, directly, make financial crime easier in the UK. Here is an example of how it will do so. Under the laws about money laundering, there is an offence called ‘tipping off’ which is exactly what it sounds like: if you tell someone that you suspect of laundering money about your suspicions then you are tipping them off and this is, not surprisingly, illegal as it would allow them to take appropriate action to avoid being caught. In particular in this official document is this description: [...]

To be clear, none of us (the engineers, the GNU/Linux sysadmins and programmers) was aware of the crimes. We were the victims. It took 3 months of persistent pushing and relentless phonecalls (expensive) to finally get the pension providers to acknowledge fraud had taken place. A full investigation by police and courts is in order. The main perpetrator still has years before retirement (burning the debt and starting afresh would be absurd) and the wife was born the same year as me. She knew what went on, not only as a spouse but also as the sole Director other than her husband. Unlike the (ex-)husband, she did not flee to Bill Gates’ home state after signing a non-disclosure agreement.
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^* There are two little girls too; they’re probably not too happy about their dad running away like he did after his first marriage, leaving his two other girls to rot to the point where, according to what he told me in person, they’d not even speak to him. The two young girls were living like millionaires using the money their parents stole from workers. Now they’re probably living like poor kids, judging by today’s trends.

Business crimes aside, there is also moral depravity. We recently learned that after two messy and ugly break-ups (divorces) he’s already “working” on his next victim/s. Maybe make a fifth and sixth girl? Watch out, girl. He ruined the lives of at least 6 women already. The second wife asked my wife and I not to even mention to the third and fourth daughters that there was a first wife and two other daughters. What a mess. How long can you lie to a small child? “Mommy, is daddy a criminal? Why are we so poor all of a sudden? Why is daddy in another country?”

rofessor Larry Lessig, best known for Creative Commons, stepped aside and let Ito run the thing. He said he’d spend the next decade or period of his life battling political corruption, instead, seeing it was getting in his way all the time.

I myself left my job at age 40. Prior to that I had worked since my mid teens (on and off when I was younger and was a student) and I intend to spent all my time campaigning not just for Software Freedom but also for justice, seeing how rotten the system is. As readers of this blog know (ought to be well aware after hundreds of blog posts on this subject here), the crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ enjoy impunity or protection from the state. Every level at the state refuses or fails to hold criminals accountable! From what can be gathered, several people were involved in this crime, it was not just one “rotten apple”. It was the company’s head Mark Anthony Taylor, his then-wife Kelly Fitter Taylor, and Louise Catherine Laura Menezes, who assisted with payroll and likely helped produce lying payslips to staff.

At Sirius, many dubious, illegal, and unethical things were done, but strategically it is better to first focus 100% on the crimes. We have MANY avenues still left to explore/exhaust.

Pursuing this can take a lot of time, but it is very important. In order not to let this distract me from my main activities I’ve made this plan: record videos, write articles as priority #1, catch up with chats (all forms, not just IRC as medium) once an hour unless urgent, Daily Links focus only on Free software (FOSS), plus any other links only when idle or when extra time becomes available.

This month, July 2023, is expected to be a record month in terms of the number of blog posts, not counting the ones in schestowitz.com. Every Tuesday I try to keep up with mortality numbers, seeing that the “media” we have here refuses to even acknowledge we have a health crisis.

schestowitz.com will continue to be quite active and maybe finish 3,000 blog post by year’s end.

Summary: The London Municipality, also known as Greater London Authority (GLA), turns its back on people who worked on its computer systems for nearly a decade; it’s not convenient to deal with victims of a crime, especially when the crime was committed on GLA’s watch while GLA was sponsoring the perpetrators of the crime

THE series about crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ is far from over. What we have here a formerly OK company that even funded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for a couple of years turning into a criminal organisation, taking bribes in secret from Bill Gates (under an NDA) while besieging and bullying its own staff. This must be treated as a criminal matter, not a civil matter. Arrests should be made as soon as possible.

But what happens when the perpetrators of the crimes are connected to the British government, not just local authorities but also Home Office? Then it gets a little… “tricky”… or “complicated” for them to handle. It’s almost like they’re asked to investigate themselves and hold themselves accountable.

As a recap, so far I’ve contacted:

1. Greater Manchester Police (repeatedly insisting I defer to Action Fraud after nearly 40 minutes on the phone)
2. Action Fraud (4 weeks, no action)
3. My MP contacting Action Fraud (4 weeks, no response)
4. GLA (London Municipality), whose computer systemd I’ve worked on since 2013
5. ECVCU Victim Contact/City of London Police
6. The equivalent of the ombudsman next

It should be strongly emphasised that:

1. I’m not the only victim. Men and women I worked with are also victims.
2. None of the steps above resulted in any real progress, except proving that this whole “law enforcement” system is trash
3. The perpetrators of the pension fraud crime (other crimes aside) got in touch with me personally and did not deny committing the crime

About 5 days ago I sent the following message to GLA, especially senior people there (they know me in person):

City of London Police Does Not Protect GLA Staff Victimised by the Employer

Two weeks ago I wrote to you regarding Action Fraud not taking action and not even replying to my MP upon escalation. After I sent the E-mail to GLA all of a sudden I received a mostly template-like message from the City of London Police E-mail system (ECVCU Victim Contact) and the Sirius Director who was in charge at the time contacted me not denying the abuses but basically trying to discourage me from pursuing criminal enforcement. I assume City of London Police messaged me because you had asked them to. Maybe they even contacted the above-mentioned Director because she contacted me at 2AM.

I responded to the police twice, but they are not even replying (not responding to my second message for 7 days as of this morning) — that’s basically consistent with my prior experiences. Nobody from GLA bothered to even reply to me, despite me working for GLA for many years while my employer (your contractor) defrauded my colleagues and I. There are many victims here, not one. I am therefore going to escalate this higher than GLA (Sirius worked for government departments above GLA) and perhaps the media too.

It does not look good that GLA does not take crime seriously, even crimes committed against its own people, despite GLA being in charge of the police (Sirius is based in London [1,2]).

_____________
[1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11014042
[2] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/03633198

These messages were definitely received, as there were even auto-responders:

Not only did they never respond. No real action has been taken to remediate things. GLA is swimming in money, it exploits people who do technical work overnight at 13-14 pounds per hour, and when it turns out those people were defrauded GLA just looks the other way. This won’t end well. We’re escalating this further and former colleague speak of legal action. Seeing how GLA and the police handled this, they’re even worse than the pension firms.

Summary: The investigation of Sirius ‘Open Source’ and any remedial actions for the crimes committed

1. The perpetrators of the fraud all need to be held accountable. This may also mean extradition and arrests. Several people were aware if not directly involved, possibly not limited to Sirius management but also the IFA and the accountants (without their active or passive cooperation it would not work; they legitimised this fraud).
2. The money which got stolen from all the staff needs to be recovered; it is expected the company will claim that there’s no money left, having emptied accounts and maybe hid the money somewhere far away, maybe under other people’s names, possibly in anticipation of the fallout as soon as victims find out. This step may require subpoenas (to unveil the list of victims, then get in touch to inform them one by one).
3. Compensation to Rianne and myself, as we were both workers who were mistreated on numerous different grounds (as above, the company may pretend that it cannot afford this). Financial accountability for this elaborate embezzlement can be passed outwards as deep-pocketed facilitators existed^*.
4. Unseal the non-disclosure agreement signed with the Gates Foundation in 2019. The timing suggests a correlation with sham staff contracts and two new shell companies, one in Washington State, not far from the Gates Foundation; this also coincided with Techrights pursuing nearly 3,000 pages from police in Washington State — those pages were eventually received from Seattle police^* and did in fact confirm an arrest for pedophilia at the home of Bill and Melinda Gates.

______
^* It is our knowledge and understanding that the company began hiding behind its accountant (I confronted the CEO about the change of address over the telephone — a very long phonecall — this past October or a day after it had happened). The company has an address at the heart and centre of London. Even its shell has the same address in London. We understand that the City of London Police is now involved (we’ve receive formal communications from the City of London Police) and we’ve also heard from someone who reckons the wheels are in motion at the police, for reasons we shall cover in the future. The City of London Police does have the powers to locate and apprehend these people. I am just a citizen, I’m not a cop, and I’ve asked the police since March to take action (this weekend is July already). There are many victims here, not just me. Noticed we’ve all along refrained from naming the perpetrators because we don’t know how many of them there are and we don’t want to falsely accuse those who are merely suspects.

^** Case Investigation Report: 2014-22121 (Seattle Police Dept. [1, 2])

Video download link | md5sum 0de07faab93ab5373d58e77a04fca707
The MP Comes Marching in
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The pension fraud at Sirius ‘Open Source’ (committed against programmers and sysadmins focused on GNU/Linux and Free software) has reached the political level; so far one can observe that politicians aren’t quite in control of the police or, contrariwise, the police enjoys immunity or exercises impunity because it simply doesn’t bother responding to politicians

A MONTH ago I turned to my Member of Parliament (MP) after the police had failed to look into fraud complaints (myself and colleagues, GNU/Linux sysadmins for the most part, were victims). My MP’s office said 4 weeks should be more than enough for police to respond, but nothing has happened, so today I disclose what happened and what will happen next (it’s far, far from over).

The video above gives a rough introduction to the issue, which is moreover explained succinctly below. When I contacted my Manchester MP a month ago I said:

Dear ????? ???????,

My name is Roy and I live in Manchester. My employer, which I resigned from in December, turned out to have engaged in embezzlement against me for over 5 years. It was pension fraud. My “pension” money was never given to a pension provider as the payslips said, and instead went into the management (black hole). Upon further inquiry this was confirmed by formal letters and I discovered they did the same to my colleagues. I reported this to Greater Manchester Police, which insisted that I file a case with Action Fraud. After 4 weeks of waiting Action Fraud made is abundantly clear that it did not even look into the case. It just turned away victims. According to media reports in reputable sources, this is quite common. I reach out to you as this is a severe political blunder at this point. I chronicled some of this in http://techrights.org/wiki/Sirius_Open_Source and http://techrights.org/wiki/Crimes_of_Sirius_Open_Source though it seems actual enforcement — something only the police can do — is needed now. Will you please bring up this matter or help me pursue justice not just for myself but also my colleagues?

Yours sincerely,

A lot of time has passed, a lot of messages were exchanged, but no progress could be made because the police is “MIA”. (Missing In Action)

Ironically, they call themselves Action Fraud. According to British broadcasters, they’re notorious for not taking action. Sure, they take reports. They have bots to respond to the reports, but what good are bots?

The ‘My “pension”‘ sentence (above) could be further elucidated. It might lead with the fact that the company withdrew money from paychecks under the pretence of contributing to the fund but never actually did so. The current wording could be made more clear. “As for turning away victims,” one person noted, “ensure that it is clear that there are many of your former colleagues in the mess as well. The closing line is quite clear, which is important.”

In the next part I’ll share some more correspondence from and to the MP. What we strive to show now is that there’s no system of accountability or, if such a system does exist, it’s clearly not functioning. It fails victims and rewards criminals.