Official ‘Standard Life’ paperwork (issued by Standard Life) was used to legitimise fraud for over half a decade
Summary: It’s starting to look more and more like pension providers in the UK, including some very major and large ones, are aiding criminals who steal money from their workers under the guise of “pensions”
THIS site isn’t about my work colleagues at Sirius ‘Open Source’. As explained this past month, this supposedly “Open Source” (not anymore!) company that was one of the FSF’s early sponsors stole a lot of money from employees, myself included. This is now a criminal matter. Several managers knew what was happening; they stole money from many of us and we will put them behind bars if possible (one of them has fled to the United States already).
The pension providers are culpable too, as we shall explain in the habitual updates (maybe once or twice per week).
Former colleagues also chase the matter. “Any progress on this?” I asked this month. “Did you file for review or something to that effect?”
As it turns out, pension providers are stonewalling. They try hard to not get involved in these crime investigations. As if ignoring the victims is a wise strategy. It’s not. It just makes them look complicit in cover-up. The person I blame the most is Leah Brown at Standard Life. For many weeks she kept saying “my hands are tied”, refusing to tell me what had actually happened. She’s a manager, so one cannot just report her to a manager. Leah Brown has made Standard Life look like part of the crime and there might be a class action lawsuit on the way. We just try to gather a list of people willing to participate in it (sharing the cost of litigation).
“Do you have contact details of other past workers?” I asked. “I’m sure quite a few had this pension and haven’t been keeping up with its status.”
Over the past month I spoke to more former workers than I can count. Some aren’t surprised by this corruption; their view of the company was already mostly negative. Most of them left years ago.
We recently found out that the exisiting CEO of Sirius (last man standing so to speak) now tries to do the job of the engineers… and is failing at it… as they left. The former CEO left too. This cheats the customers of the company as they paid for actual engineers to look after their servers. I find that situation similar to Mozilla. Maybe Madame Baker can try to develop Mozilla Firefox, but she never even did a “hello world!” program and she’s almost hitting pension age. Just like the CEO who has just left…
Did the Sirius ‘US’ (no such thing) CEO bag bribes from Bill Gates with one hand while plundering the pensions of past staff with his other hand? Stay tuned to find out… we shall get to the bottom of this. Famous last words for Sirius: we don’t need no stickin’ engineers, just some slush funds from a criminal like Bill Gates under an NDA!
Earlier this month I published “How Poorly Standard Life Has Dealt With Pension Fraud” and it cannot be stressed strongly enough that it seems like many pension companies are the same. I contacted Standard Life managers 3 times already (by phone) and I am being obstructed; colleagues tried to do the same, several times in fact, and report that they never receive a reply. They cannot even speak to anyone!
The CEO has just left the company. So who’s going to be held accountable for theft? Sirius is now, in effect, run 100% by a financial fugitive who escapes many liabilities. Any questions asked about the past are obstructed and met with stonewalling; any questions about the present, or even those who sought reassurances about the pension, are going unanswered or people are being lied to, respectively. This is a severe systemic failure.
I spoke to the company (Sirius) and so did colleagues; the company refuses to even answer very simpler questions! I still have all the paperwork from Standard Life and all the payslips to show money was ‘paid’ to Standard Life every month for over 5 years (or so they told me; it was embezzled). Recently, someone who knows Standard Life very well told me this is “theft” and my money is “stolen” by Standard Life (or in their name). I’ve already contacted the media and spoke among former colleagues about a class action lawsuit against Standard Life. It was only at that point that Standard Life started to become more cooperative. Nothing bothers Standard Life except its public image.
For several of us, some legally-savvy (I have access to an uncle who is a judge and who advised me to enroll when he heard of the Standard Life pension in 2011; back when I had lengthy discussions with him about it), the matter won’t end due to stonewalling. They cannot tire us down. My uncle feels betrayed too; it is him who convinced me to join, unlike other people whom I asked.
A the moment I am told the case is being chased by a manager called Laura Johnston (Standard Life) after escalation from Karen Liddle, who works below her level.
For the sake of transparency, here’s the latest on this:
Laura Johnston wrote on 14/03/2023 20:07:
Good Afternoon Dr. Schestowitz.
Apologies that I have not reached out before now.
Unfortunately, I don’t have anything to report so far but have reached out to the team who are dealing with this for an update.
Once I have an update from them I will be in touch.
Thank you for your patience,
I responded:
I waited for you to get back to me till 5PM yesterday and then recorded a video on this issue (as I had not heard back): http://techrights.org/2023/03/14/pension-fraud-standard-life/
More in http://techrights.org/wiki/Crimes_of_Sirius_Open_Source
and http://techrights.org/wiki/Sirius_Open_Source
I look forward to hearing of any progress. Clients of the company are contacting me, this week expressing sympathy. The company will soon have no clients and no business to even track down, so you must hurry. This really should have progressed months ago when I first contacted Mrs. Brown several times (a manager at your company). Or when colleagues sent detailed E-mails to you (those always went unanswered).
She has not responded since then (5 days have passed). She wrote “good afternoon” at 7 minutes past 8PM, so there’s a certain sense or feeling that she’s not being too honest. As if to pretend it was done within the reasonable timeframe. Remember she already failed to respond to me “today” (as she said she would 7 days earlier).
This does not look good at all for Standard Life. What should have been a trivial case of fraud (with papers and everything to prove it) isn’t progressing. Or barely (nearly 3 months already!).
Minutes ago I followed up:
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.
When people come to think of it, if she phoned before 5PM as she said she would, a lot of this escalation would not be needed. For instance, no person at Standard Life would be named and Standard Life itself would never be mentioned here. The bottom line is, Standard Life increasingly seems unwilling to deal with crime done in its name.
So the pattern that emerges is, pension providers lie, obstruct, and even cover up for people who abuse their system. This is really awful. On a separate day we’ll get back to NOW:Pension, another pension provider that provided awful service and isn’t progressing in the fraud investigation.
One day they may have to compensate us for all this trouble — us as in past workers who were plundered… like people who already have some other job, needing to spend weeks if not months chasing this rogue/criminal nonsense. Some former workers are very angry and some might lose sleep over it. More so knowing and seeing that the pension providers are mostly apathetic and only respond when the reputation is on the line. They don’t truly mind this ‘underworld’ as long as the media doesn’t report/talk about it.
Filed under: ![Standard Life: In January 2006, Standard Life were accused of smearing a policy-holder, Michael Hogan, who was not happy with the way the company was being run. An e-mail sent to Standard Life executives and advisors (which was disclosed under the Data Protection Act) revealed an attempt to discredit him.[26] In January 2007, the head of Standard Life's life and pensions business, Trevor Matthews, used the racist phrase 'nigger in the woodpile' while giving a presentation at one of the company's Edinburgh offices. After issuing an apology, Mr Matthews remained in his job and no disciplinary action was taken.[27] In March 2007 the company announced it would cut 1,000 jobs in an attempt to save an additional £100 million per year in costs.[28] One month later it was highlighted in the company's annual report that three of Standard Life's top executives (Sandy Crombie, Keith Skeoch and Trevor Matthews) were awarded more than £5 million in pay.[29] A Standard Life spokesman defended the awards, citing the leadership's efforts in turning round the company's fortunes.[29] In February 2014, Standard Life announced that it may move parts of their operations outside Scotland in the event of Scottish independence, if it was necessary to do so.[30]](http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Standard-Life.png)
uesday’s ONS figures (tomorrow around 10AM) will show if we still have infamous (major increase of about 20%) excess mortality/death levels. 
The gist of the video above is (it mended up a bit like a podcast of the pension fund’s manager and myself), they now reckon they failed to provide a good service, they recognise the severity of the matter, and things will — or at least should — be progressing a lot faster from now on.