Sunak already has his own share of financial scandals (his wife also)

“The Prime Minister promises to take the fight to the fraudsters by blocking scams ‘at the source’,” says Which? this week

Summary: The crimes of the rich (or white-collar crimes) are tolerated by our administration; not enough resources are devoted to tackling the most costly crimes, as the case of Sirius fraud shows (I’m a victim of this crime, as are my former colleagues)

ALMOST 14 days ago (2 weeks) I reported fraud to the police and got a reference number for the investigation. In less than 24 hours it’ll be officially a fortnight and they didn’t bother to contact me, follow up etc.

A saner system would do a preliminary check, freeze the assets of the company to recover stolen money, then pursue prosecution based on the evidence. In light of the impending “coronation” ceremony, this matters even more. They apparently have plenty of money/budget (the media says £250m) to protect a person in his 70s throwing a party for himself, but not enough to tackle actual crime (rather than hypothetical… or a mere risk).

“If they don’t respond,” said a colleague about Sirius ‘Open Source’ last month (he too was plundered/defrauded), “I should be able to make a small claims court claim online. I have proof from standard life saying I was not on the scheme and proof they took deductions from my pay, and a copy of the letter outlining the scheme I should have been on so should be reasonably straight forward.”

I can do the same. But the problem is that the company is ‘in hiding’. Downsides of such a course of action:

• they will dodge the legal process.
• we need to hold them criminally accountable (this is jailable offense).
• the company will claim to be broke, unable to recover the money.

The other victim asked: “What else do you have from Standard Life?”

We probably have what we need; that helps show they profited from the fraud too, but they are not directly accountable in this case.

“I have a letter from the IFA and some Standard Life booklets but nothing else,” the colleague said. I have the same. “If Standard Life simply never got contacted to enroll us, I can’t see there is anything else they can help us with.”

Yes, they cannot be held accountable, but they ought to be shamed for facilitating the scam. “If they did not follow protocols,” I said, “designed to prevent such pension fraud, then they breached rules and can be reported. But whether protocols were not followed I cannot tell you as I’m Not a Lawyer (IANAL). I suggest you go ahead and contact the company.”

It has been nearly a month now and the company refuses to even speak.

“I just looked at the fees for an online money claim through the small claims court,” the other victim said. “It’s basically 5% of the claim which could get quite expensive especially if there is no real company left to enforce against. Also I left just over [redacted] years ago so maybe out of time to make a claim.”

Just because a crime took place a long time ago doesn’t mean the police should not prosecute. Litigation is another matter.

Anyway, it’s now at the hands of the police. Let’s see what they do, if anything…

If police fails to take action despite all the evidence of the crime being sent to cops and put on their laps, then it’s fair to say that the police is enabling the crime. It is in some sense complicit by deliberate inaction. White-collar criminals would be delighted to know this; it means de facto immunity/impunity or a carte blanche to carry out more such crimes.

2019:

And now:

COVID-19 isn’t over. It never was over.

My experiences with the police have consistently shown inability to hold people accountable or solve crimes, but maybe they can prove me wrong. After all, it emboldens criminals if they see no consequences for their crimes.

Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ can become a “test” for British police; we’ll see if criminals are held accountable and, if so, how much longer that takes and how much effort by the reporters (victims)

VER the past few months we showed how unreliable UK pension providers are (or have become) and how uncooperative they can be when pension fraud is indisputably confirmed. To them, the real problem is their image, their reputation. They depend on that to attract “business” and they couldn’t care any less about the integrity of the system they’re built upon. Deep inside they know about it being ripe for — or rife with — abuse. Two months ago I saw or witnessed (firsthand) the police ‘ping-pong’ — sending people back and forth between departments in order to tire them down. If that’s how bad law enforcement can be, then we ought to illuminate it.

To remove any doubts or any misunderstandings, there are many victims here and there are ‘smoking guns’. The Pension Regulator deals with abuse by pension providers, not by the company that committed the fraud here (pension providers benefited financially, but they aren’t the perpetrators). It’s an actual crime and crimes are reported to the police, you don’t sue the criminals (in courts; civil actions). It’s the state’s job to drag the criminals to court and potentially extradite/imprison them. Regarding the company, I previously wrote to them asking where the pension money went but they did not get back to me. I did so several times. Many recipients, too. Other victims did the same and did not get a response. It’s embezzlement. It’s a crime. They’re not even denying it.

That they don’t respond to anybody is very noteworthy. It’s not worth doing that again. It’s pointless sending the same messages like 10 times. At this point the police must get involved in a timely manner. Not months down the line. They simply enable more evidence tampering and maybe for money to be hidden (relatives, friends, offshore accounts). The delays are themselves enabling more crime.

“I could write again as a letter,” one victim said, “before action informing them the pension scheme I was told I was enrolled in have confirmed no record of me being on the scheme so please provide me with details of where these deductions from my salary have been paid or I will take you to court to claim the missing payments back.”

This victim does not seem to understand the status of the company. That would be a good approach if the company still had a physical office and money in the bank. “Expect them not to even reply,” I said. “That in itself would say a lot.”

To be clear, the missing payments aren’t the whole problem, nor are the interest payments.

At least 3 people in the company committed a crime. Two of them are in the UK and can (should) be held legally accountable. One of them, who is in the UK, enjoys the money she stole from us.

Just to reiterate, this isn’t about some “dispute” between an employer and employees; it’s an actual crime that took place and went on for years. This isn’t something to be settled in courts; handcuffs will be needed and if the police does not intervene fast enough, it’ll embolden/legitimise some perceptions about police not caring about crime. The company’s departing CEO (he left in March, apparently quite abruptly) changed the address of the company to the address of a different company (I confronted him about it over the telephone weeks before the witch-hunt began). When we contacted this company last month (to inform it of what had happened) it did not even bother responding. There is a chain or a network of facilitators here.

Hello, police, can I report a crime? Hello?

Video download link | md5sum 936bb02a9a75a1b377910fe67756870d
Tackling Sirius Fraud at the Police
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The managers at Sirius ‘Open Source’, who don’t even use GNU/Linux and who steer away from Open Source, stole a lot of money from many GNU/Linux engineers and were reported to the police; but it’s rather revealing and telling that the police does not prioritise prosecution against white-collar criminals (cops would rather deal with poor shoplifters and such)

Action Fraud is the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cyber crime where you should report fraud if you have been scammed [or] defrauded,” says the site at actionfraud.police.uk, which Greater Manchester Police asked me to go to. So 8 days ago I did and my expectation was that they would be slow to progress. As noted in the video above, it’s not just about myself as other former colleagues are victims of the same crime and they too are chasing this.

This video may seem unrelated to tech, but one must consider what Sirius ‘Open Source’ is and what it claims to be. This is turning out to be a massive embarrassment in the UK because clients of Sirius ‘Open Source’ (scare quotes intentional) were some of the very largest public institutions in the UK and elsewhere. What if they realised that a firm that calls itself “Open Source” is managed by people who reject Open Source and who engage in fraud against engineers who do in fact insist on Open Source? What would these large public institutions in the UK think?

We know it’s a case of fraud. Fraud took place and action is now needed. Many people affected. Will police get its resources assigned to tackle fraud?

Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were reported to the authorities; as expected, the authorities are in no rush to investigate and prosecute, which is why so many people out there (in most countries) have become cynical about police and cops

PUBLIC officials in the US are once again bailing out (instead of punishing) rogue banks, so now is a good time to catch up with this series.

Victims of serious and expensive crime are involved in the above (not just yours truly). It’s a crime that went on for years. We wait for law enforcement to flex some muscles, but with slow response times like these much patience is needed. Here’s the full text from the screenshot above:

Dear Mr schestowitz,

I am sorry to hear you have been a victim of crime. Thank you for taking the time to report to Action Fraud. Your report has been sent to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) for review.

Experts at the NFIB will examine the information you provide. Where possible, the information is also matched against other available data in order to enrich and corroborate the details of the fraud. An assessment will be made as to whether there are viable lines of enquiry that would enable a law enforcement body, such as the police service, to investigate. The NFIB aim to provide you with an update on your report within 28 days.

Please be assured that by contacting us you are giving the police vital information they need to protect you and others. The information you have provided may be used to disrupt criminal activity and inform prevention advice and campaigns.

You should keep safe any evidence which you feel may be important. We continuously assess the content of individual and linked crime reports, if you set up an online account, you can use this to add additional information.

If you have any queries regarding this letter please visit www.actionfraud.police.uk/FAQ. If you would like more information on how to protect yourself from fraud and cyber crime, please see the guidance at www.actionfraud.police.uk/support_for_you.

We value your feedback, please visit this link and complete the survey:
www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CSATREP

Yours sincerely,

Head of Action Fraud

For real-time alerts and prevention advice follow Action Fraud https://www.facebook.com/actionfraud/”actionfraud” or https://twitter.com/actionfrauduk “actionfrauduk”

Notice their use of HTML (with images embedded) and how they’ve managed to outsource themselves Surveymonkey, Twitter, and Facebook. Maybe they should look into Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, not give them more business.

“I think it might not be too expensive to take them to court,” a colleague told me, as “the problem maybe enforcement of any judgement.”

We need action.

Sirius is broke, its UK CEO left weeks ago (actively hiding past association with the company right now), and enforcement against someone who is “in hiding” would be hard. We spoke about this with a lawyer last year. He agreed that it would be rather futile suing a company that can barely even present anything in a British court.

Either way, unless the authorities show they’re willing to tackle fraud, public perception may grow that authorities are apathetic, complicit, or passively sympathetic towards crime.

If the company that claims (or claimed) to be a “leader” in Open Source in the UK is behaving like this, readers of Techrights deserve to know.

Video download link | md5sum 123a41526a6d53bb9f2378df84318c7c
Envisioning Bankruptcy
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The story of last summer at Sirius (it started in late spring) is told now in retrospect, based on about 5 hours of recordings (3 meetings); it didn’t work out as the managers had hoped/planned and instead the company’s last chief is now doing double-shifts (16 hours in a row!), basically trying to make up for extreme understaffing amidst a clients exodus; the CEO left last month as well, so he seems to have become unemployed after sinking the ship he rode on

MY final year at Sirius ‘Open Source’ was last year and it was already getting pretty awful. There was lying, deceit, and cover-up. Managers were pretty much predicting doom (without saying it out loud) and they had already silently robbed past staff.

The video above has a period of long silence in it because, for the first time, I forgot to unmute myself after playing back what a manager said last summer (90 minutes after the start of this recording). People can hear right from the horse’s mouth that things were getting really bad, no matter how much lipstick was put on the pig. The silent bit hopefully didn’t cover anything too critical (which wasn’t repeated later, but it’ll serve as a lesson for future videos regardless).

‘Fantasies’ of Sirius became more commonplace, and this wasn’t limited to just discussing “re-infrastructuring” and other ‘big words’. After taking notes or listening to suggestions from staff they eventually did what they planned all along. In other words, nothing has been implemented since then that wasn’t premeditated. Previous suggestions were rejected… despite never-ending options put forth by staff.

It’s regretful that I lost part of what I said due to the muting lasting too long; this is probably the first time I lost audio since last summer when we recorded about Belarus/EPO (a bad mouse button was to blame back then).

Anyway, as a side note I recall how one of the romantic partners of a manager (he has several) kept suggesting that we should lower the already-low salaries of people who work all night long and are highly qualified, have high seniority or have long served the company during a year of massive inflation (about 10% in the UK!) while leaving in tact the salary of her girlfriend, who covers daytime. This person does not seem to have any understanding of the law; when people work overnight the salary must be a lot higher than in daytime/Office Hours. Sometimes it’s better to be quiet than to say out loud something foolish if not illegal.

But that’s not “the” crime; it’s just a side issue for a company that became “petty thief” (very big thief).

This is the last part of this mini-series. We hope it has helped explain what happened last year without naming any people or revealing any clients.

Video download link | md5sum e6d79ef1efc46c2747184e07504811b1
Sirius Plans That Never Materialised
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The gross mismanagement of Sirius ‘Open Source’ is a longstanding issue; it goes back to 2019 and it culminated in growing levels of deceit, set aside fraud aspects, so today we take a look back at another meeting from 2022

LISTENING to audio from almost a year ago (we have about 5 hours of audio from last summer; this was shared with staff), it now seems clear that Sirius ‘Open Source’ had a lot of fantasies while drifting further and further away from… well, ‘Open Source’.

In the start of summer (2022-06-01) we had a second meeting (out of 3 in total) about the future of the company and studying it in retrospect it’s easy to understand [crer 168114 witch-hunts], scare tactics etc. Colleagues were subjected to threats and were isolated from their peers. They deemed this approach “evil” (direct quote).

Much of the ‘meat’ of the meeting starts a long time after the start with staff that’s actually technical (and actually doing all the work, even 24/7) raising questions while the others repeat the same talking points. Basically, managers (which at that point where like half of all the staff) were discussing many options and presenting each. They collected suggestions from staff and eventually threw all of them out. Staff was a bit surprised that after these consultations every suggestion from the staff was rejected. Every single one of them!

One of the self-appointed managers (no relevant skills whatsoever) was discussing the scoring criteria — e.g. what will be assessed in appraisals. She was only reading the script/presentation. It’s highly probable she was fully aware of the pension fraud and she may have directly participated in that. An opportunistic career-climbing narcissist. The discussion continued about criteria e.g. sick leave (my wife and I never took even one day off for illness/feeling unwell) and one colleague was so uncomfortable about the meeting that he left his microphone on mute and turned off the camera for the entire meeting.

As noted in the video above, the company lied about a lot of things, including new roles, hiring in the US, new clients in the US and so on.