Video download link | md5sum d16a8e521955e0561c74d8a2dc9a0b38
Long Path Towards Justice
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were exposed here some months ago and reported to British police (formally) 2 months ago; I had spoken to the police since around March, but waiting for official confirmation of the crime (from Standard Life) would strengthen the report (Standard Life also confirmed this to my colleagues, separately); at this point we’re showing that the police is, instead of serving and protecting the British public, is serving and protecting high-level fraud by negligence and inaction, be it deliberate or not

t’s disturbing that there is no agency willing to even look at the dealing with the fraud,” an associate has told us today.

I’ve already documented the involvement by police here in Manchester, politicians in Manchester, Action Fraud, and even HMRC (HM stands for His Majesty, the brother of Jeffrey Epstein’s “frequent flyer”). Worry not, however, as this will escalate further and higher. The longer it goes on for, the bigger a scandal this will become, not just for Sirius (government contractor for Free software) but also for its clients and for the government. The “first US client” of Sirius (2019) was another one of Jeffrey Epstein’s “frequent flyers”, albeit under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

It seems pretty safe to say that this series may last a lot longer than the company exists. Sirius will probably fold before it reaches its 25^th anniversary, based on reliable sources. The company is just like a pair of people now, maybe a little more than a pair. Everyone left and recruitment is infeasible.

As noted in the video above, the next steps include the police ombudsman, pension ombudsman (not the same), British media/press, the people who manage the budget of The Met (including Action Fraud), and so on. Some are directly connected to Sirius, so it’ll be a great fiasco of great proportions. There’s also the Standard Life dispute, as they gained from the scam (financially), and we might revisit NOW: Pensions at some point. Their account there is managed by criminals. They need to relinquish control of that money.

Video download link | md5sum 25143997fa3602ec8a0eb4b96c0ea757
Complaining to the Government About Government Contractor
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The accountability for crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ will require government intervention, i.e. law enforcement and courts’ involvement; based on what we’ve witnessed so far, the British government would rather ignore crimes that involve its frequent contractor for Free software projects

THIS tenth part of the series is primarily a video. It talks about the government connections at Sirius ‘Open Source’. Not only the police ignores the matter; we’ve also shown that HMRC is looking the other way and later this month we’ll show the reaction from agencies that gave the contracts.

Next week is important because we’ll see whether British police also ignores Members of Parliament, who are understandably upset about this impunity. The police was given 4 weeks to respond — that’s very ample time — and Tuesday (or Wednesday) marks 4 weeks.

Summary: Today we conclude this week’s series, which explained how Sirius isn’t just funded by the British government but is also protected by the British government; HMRC is not responding to fraud reports (sent exactly 4 weeks ago) and Action Fraud, overseen by a client of Sirius (since 2013), does not seem to have even opened the Pension Fraud complaint (it sent a template response after exactly 4 weeks^*)

WHEN we finally reach Tuesday or Wednesday (next week) it will be 4 weeks since my Member of Parliament contacted Action Fraud regarding the pension fraud complaint that Action Fraud is ignoring. Action Fraud has still not bothered responding to her. I’m not the sole victim of this fraud. Former colleagues were robbed as well (a lot of money was covertly stolen). For the time being we’re closing this series and will post another further update/s anew. This isn’t the end. This is only the beginning of a rather broad political scandal. Can one trust a government to regulate itself or its contractors? Can one complain to a government about abuse against its own workers? This in many ways resembles the EPO scandals. The EPO even invented its own Ombuds office or “EPO’s Ombuds service”, created and controlled by those who spent over a decade committing crimes at the EPO. Such “Ombuds” is farcical; it’s an exercise in optics (giving people out there the mere illusion of accountability).

Gaslighting and/or self-induced defeatism (learned helplessness) is a potent weapon leveraged against the impatient and unmotivated. We’re neither impatient nor unmotivated, so this will carry on and on until a resolution is found and the perpetrators of the crime are arrested.
_____
^* Out of business hours on a weekend. It seems safe to assume no actual person sent that.

Summary: Contractors may seem glowingly popular at the Linux Foundation; but what does contracting mean for corporate liability?

WHEN this series started 6 months ago we promised not to name clients, even though most of them are listed and shown publicly in the company’s official Web site.

Seeing that the British authorities (or “Crown”) are unwilling to hold Sirius accountable for pension fraud, we thought it would be worth showing what’s already public anyway. Here are some government clients of Sirius:

All the above is public anyway. And I’ve blurred out anything that’s not a public institution. Another page:

There are many more that the company does not publicly name, including Parliamentary Ombudsman, Home Office, and more recently Acas (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service). There are several more that are named, e.g. Bristol City Council. Some are omitted from the carousel, but appear in another page because almost nobody is left in the company who knows how to properly maintain its Drupal Web site e.g. myself or the Support Manager. Everyone is rapidly leaving and the replacement rate is near 0-to-1.

If we are going to expose our regime too, seeing that it does not want to look into very obvious evidence of fraud, it helps to provide evidence of the company’s ties to the government. It is very much possible that later this month it will implicate London’s municipality because it’s directly connected to the cops who aren’t investigating the matter and won’t even look into reports of crime. We don’t think it’s a coincidence. They probably just don’t that would be fun! Do they really want to participate in a blunder that embarrasses their sponsor? It’s not just any municipality; I worked on their systems for ages and I also have lots to prove just how much I worked for them while my boss defrauded me and my colleagues.

Stay tuned. We have lots left to show. Sans a D-Notice, maybe this will even hit the mainstream media.

“Hi, I have read your blog on Sirius. Do you have any time to discuss further?”

–Anonymised message, earlier this month

Video download link | md5sum cd10c506a34bdc112395c0e2c16921ce
HMRC a Money Sink
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: What we’ve been demonstrating or highlighting so far this year is a defunct system of accountability, wherein the government officials and their associates are essentially above the law; can they endure the negative press that entails?

AS noted earlier in a meme, it’s now 3 weeks since reporting to HMRC that Sirius ‘Open Source’ lied in its tax filings when it issued false payslips. It told staff that pension payments had been made (every month for more than half a decade), but no money was paid. The company’s managers basically stole the money. It’s a crime, it’s embezzlement, and punishment for this crime is severe (there are many crimes committed all at the same time).

As the above video notes, seeing that HMRC doesn’t seem to care (probably too busy scrutinising the accounts of activists or political ‘enemies’), we’re progressing and moving onwards to additional steps. Many points of escalation remain. Thus far, the experience has been boding ill/poorly for the system of justice and enforcement in the UK. It’s like some kind of Kafka novel, wherein one turns from place to place like a ping-pong ball. Somehow some people are pretty much “above the law”. What might this do to public confidence in the “checks and balances”… or in slogans we’re shown on TV and radio (mass broadcast) about no escaping the wrath of the Rule of Law? We’ve written for nearly a decade about immunity and impunity in the EPO and now I (along with former colleagues) witness the same in the United Kingdom, a country where a “prince” can sleep with underage girls and then pay our tax money to “settle” and avoid extradition/arrest. The only person arrested over it was a protester who had ‘heckled’ him at his mom’s funeral.

It’s like writing to zombie agencies that exist only on paper or selectively enforce (based on special interests)

Summary: One week ago we reported tax abuses of Sirius ‘Open Source’ to HMRC; we still wait for any actual signs that HMRC is doing anything at all about the matter (Sirius has British government clients, so maybe they’d rather not look into that, in which case HMRC might be reported to the Ombudsman for malpractice)

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.