Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ aren’t being tackled; the criminals await punishment, knowing that the British government (former client) might be incentivised not to get involved

N SPITE of turbulent conditions, our site has managed to stay online the entire weekend. We’ll have more to say about it some other day.

We’re meanwhile learning about high-level corruption in EU authorities, connected to the EPO. “On Monday they will meet to decide to relocate London in an illegal manner,” the FFII’s president told me the other day. “This is theft of democracy, as national parliaments did not decide this.” That’s tomorrow. High-level corruption seems to have been “normalised” somewhat. They seem to be getting away with it. The same is true here in the UK, even after Brexit.

Today we’re going to close this series, after 11 parts in total. We’ll tell a month-long story about my Member of Parliament (MP) in Central Manchester failing to communicate with the police, or rather, the police not bothering to even reply. Yes, here in the UK, not the EU and EC. In my personal view, a united Europe is good idea. I’ve always supported the EU. But now they become a hub of corruption and this month they’re greenlighting an ILLEGAL and UNCONSTITUTIONAL kangaroo court for patents, knowingly violating conventions too. How can I still support such a thing? How can anybody support such a thing? In places such as Russia, people have come to expect some arrogance in lawbreaking (“we’re above the law! What are you gonna do, eh?”), but I’m seeing the same in the EU and in the UK this year. We’ve gradually becoming more and more like the Kremlin, wherein the dictator always has the last word and doesn’t bother with laws, constitutions etc. (except when these suit him or her)

This post will lay bare the communications I’ve had with the MP or her case handler. They speak for themselves, but I will add some commentary to join the pertinent bits.

My initial message, the reaching out, was quoted verbatim in the last part. I quickly wrote a short description of the crime and emphasised that the crime also had victims other than myself. To her credit, my MP was always quick to reply and was professional^*.

Here is the response that I received a month ago (23/5/2023):

Dear Dr Roy

Thanks for getting in contact with [MP]]. So that [MP] can look into this further could you provide a copy of your response from Action Fraud and any crime reference you have.

I did as asked on the same day:

Hi, the response dated 20/5/2023:

[redacted]

On 26/5/2023:

Dear Roy

[MP] has contacted Action Fraud on your behalf requesting that they review their decision and investigate the fraud ,you have suffered. We will be in contact as soon as we have a response.

Best Wishes – Caseworker

I responded shortly afterwards:

[MP] wrote on 26/05/2023 11:37:
>
> Dear Roy
>
> [MP] has contacted Action Fraud on your behalf requesting that they review their decision and investigate the fraud ,you have suffered. We will be in contact as soon as we have a response.

Thank you, that is encouraging news.

I followed up weeks later (5/6/2023):

[MP] wrote on 26/05/2023 11:37:
>
> Dear Roy
>
> [MP] has contacted Action Fraud on your behalf requesting that they review their decision and investigate the fraud ,you have suffered. We will be in contact as soon as we have a response.
> Best Wishes Lee – Caseworker
>
> [MP] MP
> Member of Parliament for Manchester Central

Hi,

Has the police gotten back to you? My colleagues, who are also victims of the crime, wonder as well. We’ve meanwhile reported this as a tax fraud as well (because technically it is) to HMRC. 15 days later HMRC did not even bother replying. Mind you, Sirius had many government clients including Home Office and the Parliamentary Ombudsman. Some of us suspect there’s a lack of incentive to convict here, not even to investigate the matter. They hardly need to investigate because we spent months getting written statements that prove it all. Can you bring this subject up in Parliament, please?

Kind regards,

Sent by them 5/6/2023:

Dear Roy

I am sorry to report that [MP] has not yet received a response .It can regrettably take a number of weeks but we will contact you immediately.

Best Wishes – caseworker

I then followed up as follows:

[MP] wrote on 05/06/2023 09:15:
> Dear Roy
>
> I am sorry to report that [MP] has not yet received a response .It can regrettably take a number of weeks but we will contact you immediately
Thanks, I very much appreciate her looking into it. She is the first person in government to actually touch this. To reiterate why it’s sensitive:

1. UK government departments outsourced to (contracted) Sirius
2. Sirius quietly defrauded its staff (which worked on the above computer systems) within months of them joining
3. The workers found out they had been defrauded since 2011 (it took months to verify as firms were stonewalling and obstructing inquiries). It took 12 years to uncover.
4. The workers contacted Action Fraud, HMRC, the IFA, the accountant of Sirius, and the pension firms
5. To date, only the pension firms responded, but only after a lot of prodding — months of escalating to management there. Some managers initially gave contradictory stories; yes, managers at Standard Life lied to us.

It may seem or may turn out to be a potential embarrassment to those who gave the contract to Sirius. We were grossly underpaid and on top of this we were defrauded (embezzlement). There are many other scandals, but this one involves an actual crime.

Kind regards,

3 more days passed and I asked for progress and deadline (08/06/2023):

Roy Schestowitz wrote on 05/06/2023 12:32:
> [MP] wrote on 05/06/2023 09:15:
>> Dear Roy
>>
>> I am sorry to report that [MP] has not yet received a response .It can regrettably take a number of weeks but we will contact you immediately

Hi,

If my MP receives no reply within 4 weeks, are you OK with me escalating to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/independent-police-complaint-commission ? It’s now known as the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/ and except in Northern Ireland there seems to be no ombudsman for the police, so this seems to be the last resort at this level.

Regards,

Then sent by [MP]‘s office 8/6/2023 (same day):

Dear Roy

I would advise that you contact us again after 4 weeks so that we can confirm if we have received any response. You can contact them but we cannot advise if they would class this as an acceptable period to wait.

12 more days passed. It had been 4 weeks since she initiated contact. I wrote:

Hi [MP],

It has now been 4+ weeks since the E-mail that I relayed you.

As per the advice from your case worker, may I kindly suggest you escalate the matter to Parliament, stating that Action Fraud not only ignores fraud complaints from victims (the response below is quite obviously a template for several reasons; they didn’t bother even responding to it, except by bot) but also ignores my MP?

I did not know I lived in a Third-World Country where police exists only in principle. After contacting Greater Manchester Police and speaking to them for 40 minutes they strongly insisted that I contact Action Fraud and assured me action would be taken. It turns out to be even worse as Action Fraud isn’t even responding to my MP and my colleagues had a lot of money stolen from them too.

Based on inside sources, the company is quickly vanishing with all that stolen money. Action Fraud has failed to deal with this for 2 months already.

Kind regards,

As one person put it, “what other courses of action are there? why are the police unaccountable for white-collar crime and fraud?”

Stay tuned, there’s a lot more to come. There are other victims of this crimes. It cannot be brushed away or swept aside.
__________
^* My original thinking was, it’s better to be pessimistic. I assumed that my MP might do nothing. If so, that too is noteworthy. But she actually did respond and she did take action. Unlike Action Fraud. My approach at the start was, if she does not respond, I will move on to the next MP, as I did with EPO and MEPs, but never bother people, i.e. not resort to mass mailing, 2 or 3 maximum (if the first does nothing).

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.

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 2b05fb5773a9dbb62489443cea324fe4
BT and the Vanishing Discounts
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

ESTERDAY when I checked E-mail I saw a message with the subject line “Driven from template” (yes, it’s a mistake, they mass-mailed perhaps millions of people and forget the set a subject line).

They said “line rental” costs would, in effect, rise by yet another 8% or something like that. That’s after the price had already been raised several times in recently years.

In addition, BT intentionally slows down connections.

The video above documents a call and show how I managed to keep the price lower. You really have to negotiate quite hard with them, especially if you don’t want to be ripped off. It’s a real nuisance at times.

As Ryan just put it in IRC: “ISPs play the “We’ll raise your price after a promo but if you bother to call us every year we’ll lower it again. That way they get to gouge people who are not sensitive to price, embarrassed to ask, or too busy. You just chat with a customer service person in the Philippines or something over a pop up box. They don’t give a shit what you pay for your internet account. They get a bonus for retaining customers.”

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.

All about bundling and complicated structuring for tiers (artificially-degraded services)

moved to fibre-optics earlier this year. It was already possible in 2021, but following a series of blunders I decided to delay the transition by nearly 2 years.

The thing about it this year is, BT lied about various things. It also lied about speeds (downstream and upstream) of the connection. How do I know? Well, the other day I did large uploads and then BT all of a sudden phoned me. It was a sales rep. He almost immediately started asking me if I wanted to upgrade speeds. I politely declined and explained why.

But now it’s changing some more. It now ‘feels’ different; now they seem to be severely throttling my uploads (probably to upsell again after a ‘free trial’ which lasted a fortnight; after this trial they tried to upsell it several times). How desperate are they for extra money?

Everyone knows that fibre should not be 100kB/sec upstream, no matter what (unless there is something wrong at the other end, the receiving end).

They want more money, so they hobble/throttle by upstream speeds and then phone me to ask me to pay more. They want me pay yet more money to get what I ALREADY paid for. Not nice. Will they be doing so more aggressively once they’ve transitions almost everyone to fibre-optics, under-delivering intentionally?

Your misery and impatience should not be their profit prospect. Because then they have a financial incentive to make you miserable or less productive.

BT “customer services” may fancy saying they don’t intentionally slow down connections, but of course they do. Selling you back the “real” speed is part of the business model. It’s a class system.