Video download link | md5sum Victims of Open Source Charlatans
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Summary: Following today's part about the crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ another video seemed to be well overdue (those installments used to be daily); the video above explains to relevance to Techrights and how workers feel about being cheated by a company that presents itself as “Open Source” even to some of the highest and most prestigious public institutions in the UK
Summary: Crimes committed by the company that I left months ago are coming to light; today we share some reactions from other former staff (without naming anybody)
TODAY we take a look at the nature of the crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’, what pension providers are saying, and what former colleagues say about the company upon realising that it is corrupt (spoiler: some aren’t even surprised).
We shall start with the pension providers, with focus on Standard Life (the other provider has not even responded yet!) as about 6 hours after I complained about it (and made this meme) Standard Life contacted me by E-mail to say: (days late already)
Dear Dr Schestowitz
Thank you for your email.
We are carefully considering the concerns you have raised. I’m sorry if the time this is taking is frustrating for you, but we believe it is appropriate given the situation.
I will be in touch with you again as soon as possible.
Yours sincerely
███████████ ██████████
Complaint Consultant
This does not say anything concrete. It has been like this since March 7th and we’re soon in April. Sirius is running out of clients, i.e. out of revenue stream. How long must one wait? When it comes to Standard Life, the interactions over the telephone go back to January. Why does this take so long to progress? What does that tell us about the pensions/financial sector (Standard Life is a giant in this sector)?
About a month ago I said to the company, Sirius: “I spoke to numerous managers at Standard Life for 3 months. They reached the conclusion that myself and colleagues never had any money deposited there — money taken for “Pension” off of our salary, as per the payslips for 5+ years. This suggests pension fraud and an actual crime. I assume, moreover, that [wife] (as Director and spouse) was fully aware of this. In the name of journalistic integrity I must first ask you if this is patently false — a chance for you to comment in your defence. A lack of reply can be interpreted as implicit admission of guilt.”
“To paraphrase what you said in a call back in November, “it doesn’t look good.””
“The company is totally unable to defend itself, but will enforcement and prosecution follow?”There has been no response since. None. They know they’re guilty. Days later I wrote to say: “You did not respond. I assume you have nothing to say in your defense. My E-mails to [CEO] are bouncing, so I assume he wants nothing to do with the company anymore. A month ago you failed to provide a physical address for the company. Now it is moreover headless (the CEO left). [PA] is still based in the UK and E-mails to her are not bouncing, so I will assume she is best point of contact.”
Still no response. The company is totally unable to defend itself, but will enforcement and prosecution follow? If not, the same people can commit the same crimes again, without any consequences. Are we living in a state of anarchy where businesses and managers can defraud staff and then just refuse to even communicate? Are we living in a state of affairs where pension providers and police can just look the other way, even when presented with hard evidence of the crimes?
“You are choosing not to reply,” I said to them. “It does not improve matters. For neither of you. [PA] was fully aware of what had gone on because: 1) colleagues asked her about this pension (even years ago) and she did not get back with an answer. 2) she was at the company in the years of that pension scheme and she was involved in what seems to be deliberate embezzlement of funds, along with both [wife] and you.”
So at least 3 people in management are legally liable. Two of them are still in England, whereas one is ‘in hiding’ in the US. Hiding in some basement with a rib shirt on.
“So at least 3 people in management are legally liable. Two of them are still in England, whereas one is in hiding in the US.”When will authorities do something on this matter? How many hours on the phone are required for action? How many E-mails? So far we’re talking about 30 E-mails and 6 hours over the telephone. That’s just counting my own role, not colleagues’.
“I’ve already proceeded to legal consultation on this,” I told them. “If I receive no reply by Monday, we (myself and others who are impacted; I spoke to a lot of former staff) shall escalate and potentially file a class action lawsuit, pressing charges along criminal lines (possible extradition after warrant of arrest). The pension provider is also on the case, at the managers’ level. They’re very unhappy about what happened.”
This was a while ago. Notice the ultimatum: “You need to correct what has happened and we’re still open to a settlement/compromise to avoid another escalation (after Monday, 13th of March).”
Days passed since it first became clear that the company had committed a crime. The CEO vanished (left abruptly) and then deleted any connection he ever had with the company. Even a few days after the 13th of March. The company also finally (belatedly) removed us from its pages. There must be a bit of a panic, knowing they engaged in fraud for over 5 years and are finally being investigated for it.
“Days passed since it first became clear that the company had committed a crime. The CEO vanished (left abruptly) and then deleted any connection he ever had with the company.”“Our money was embezzled,” I told other victims. “[wife], [husband] and [PA] knew what they were doing. They never paid to Standard Life the money they specified in our payslips (management at Standard Life told me this). We need to sue the company while it still exists to hold them accountable. Some lawyers would agree to do this for a percent of the money awarded rather than per hour spent. Will you join us? I spoke to a lot of past staff.”
Depending on the outcome of the investigations (yes, plural), we’ll proceed sensibly. If the company cannot pay for its crimes, the pension provider/s will.
One other victim noted: “Have you got any details confirming it was embezzled [...] Shouldn’t we be able to make a claim against Standard Life / the IFA for never notifying us money was transferred or wasn’t being paid?”
“If the company cannot pay for its crimes, the pension provider/s will.”I still have everything on record (audio) and full names of two managers I spoke to. It’s rather well documented, not just what I made public. I am no expert when it comes to pension-related laws, but the other victim may be right. It may be possible to hold the pension provider accountable too. They never ever contacted us.
So anyway, the pension series might turn out to (at least!) have some educational value; all this time-wasting will turn into “making a point” at a time when people don’t trust financial institutions anyway. It might also become a class action lawsuit, in case stolen money can still be recovered (we’re taking about potentially 50,000 pounds or a lot more; it’s hard to assess until we know all the victims).
Having been in touch with other potential victims, it seems clear they’re rather disturbed by the discovery and very sympathetic towards other colleagues. Been a long time since we last spoke in some cases, but they’re still around and they still recall the Sirius pension. “I left Sirius a few months ago and the CEO left days ago,” I told them. “Turns out the company plundered people’s old pensions (2011), so this likely affects you as an employee.”
Back then we didn’t yet have it confirmed that the company committed crimes, but it seemed clear it was being verified and soon validated. I asked: “Did you have a pension with the company at the time? A bunch of us are grouping, as the company apparently committed a crime.”
“Having been in touch with other potential victims, it seems clear they’re rather disturbed by the discovery and very sympathetic towards other colleagues.”For the sake of privacy/confidentiality, I won’t name anybody here. But their responses are telling.
One of them said: “It has indeed been a long time! How are things with you? I’m still working remotely: turns out it’s a thing now :)”
Yes, working from home is definitely a thing now. Some of us still do that.
“I didn’t have a pension with Sirius,” a former colleague told me, as “I was only there [redacted] months or so and never got it arranged – but if they raided your pensions you definitely should chase it up. Good luck with your case!”
My wife and I both left when the company had gone rogue. I will continue to chase the pension’gate’ even if just to show how pension providers respond to such matters. Spending so much time on the telephone over 3 months is indicative of institutional failure far broader than Sirius itself.
“I’m shocked (although not totally surprised) to hear that,” another former colleague told me. “Are you talking about [boss]? I hadn’t realized they’d moved to America…”
“A lot of workers were so ‘ad hoc’ that they didn’t realise what was going on. Even their alleged “pension” was basically a fraud.”They didn’t. He’s hiding there after taking some cash from the Gates slush fund (under an NDA!) while tricking all staff to sign an employment contract they never saw before, joining a shell valued at one pound without being properly informed. This in itself is very likely illegal, as we noted here before. The former colleague told me: “I didn’t have a pension (nor even an employment contract!) so don’t have any skin in this game but keep me posted on how you get on.”
So even back then the company had staff with no “employment contract!”
“Sorry to hear that!” said another former colleague. “I honestly don’t remember. I’m currently traveling, but will check my docs and let you know tomorrow! Thanks for the heads up…”
A lot of workers were so ‘ad hoc’ that they didn’t realise what was going on. Even their alleged “pension” was basically a fraud.
We’ll keep abreast of any updates and publish them as deemed suitable. █
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!
“How long will it take for pension providers to take action? Will they wait until the company goes bankrupt?”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. █
Summary: The talk is entitled “A tour of malicious software, with a typical cell phone as example.” Richard Stallman is speaking about the free software movement and your freedom. His speech is nontechnical. The talk was given on March 17, 2023 in Somerville, MA.
Video download link | md5sum 388650e7d4e9f734a4572fd0265c3c95 Free Speech Online, Banking Digitally, and More
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: A “society of sheeple” (a term used by Richard Stallman last week in his speech) is being “herded” online and offline; the video covers examples both online and offline, the latter being absence of ATMs or lack of properly-functioning ATMs (a growing problem lately, at least where I live)
THE video above is an outline of topics we’ve been covering, dealing with, barely coping with (like struggling to get cash out of ATMs where I live), and may cover some time soon. One recurring theme will be “online” banking or banking with “apps”.
The video starts by discussing online censorship. Days ago a longtime contributor, Ryan Farmer, had his blog suspended for no sane reason! None at all! If one tries to access anything on his blog it says “baronhk.wordpress.com is no longer available. The authors have deleted this site.”
This deletion was actually a protest after he had been unjustly suspended, having published this article (OMG! Someone call the cops! The headline had the string “porn” in it!).
There will be a lot more details in IRC scrollbacks, including today’s (to be publish shortly). As an associate noted on the day of the suspension, “hugo or jekyll or pelican would be a better choice than wordpress.com” (where the ban/suspension happened; we’re in discussion with them about restoring the blog).
“The video starts by discussing online censorship.”Free speech online is threatened. Self-hosting is one way to curb this trend. We’ve spoken strongly in favour of self-hosting for several years already, cautioning about the inflation of censorship in the COVID-19 era. Yes, it predates COVID-19, but it has been getting a lot worse in recent years.
After discussing Ryan’s situation I pivot to a completely different topic, namely ATMs (or “cash machines” as we call them here). Our ATM journeys are over for now because machines that dispense cash have become less dependable. We’ve surveyed quite a few machines over the past fortnight. Got cash? One nearby shop let an ATM run out of it (it already had a chance to restock when it cautioned it had run low) and there are a lot fewer bank branches/offices in the city, so contingencies are very limited and overcrowded, maybe by intention. They try to herd all the “clients” into their “apps” and “sites”. The video above speaks of some recent experiences of mine. It focuses on NatWest, but I tried in 3 different banks. They’re all acting similarly. They used to offer actual services, but they are “consolidating” though (fewer staff, fewer services, fewer places you can go). In the case of NatWest, they have just 2 branches left in the centre of town. There used to be a lot more.
In some places it’s even worse; some banks “have only a single office with highly restricted visiting hours,” somebody recently told me. Speaking of this from a surveillance/tracking perspective, there’s much to be said about the “war on cash” and what happens when clients cannot withdraw physical money. More people need to protest this “war on cash”; one person mentioning the problem is better than zero people naming the problem, e.g. cashless ATMs (literally no cash in them, one can just do an account’s balance check!).
“A society that cannot pay anonymously is a society that’s easier to censor, surveil, and abuse in all sorts of other ways.”These things won’t be improving. We’re heading down a dark path.
“Once people accept that there is no cash in the ATMs they will get removed because few will complain at that point,” one person told me. “That’s an other problem which Microsoft has provided: getting people to accept abuse without complaining and a general learned helplessness about the situation. Worse, many people have become Microsoft sympathisers due to disinformation and just plain “magical thinking” about the situation. [...] there is a lot of disinformation out there combined with wishful, unrealistic thinking and denial of empirical facts. Then there is the learned helplessness which is even more harmful. Microsoft [leads to] incompetence. Their sales pitch is that it is so simple that trained monkeys can run it, but then when it inevitably fails to work as advertised, whine that it is too hard and that they lack the knowledge and skill to make it work. In truth those products only have to look good enough to make the sale to the manager with purchasing authority. After that, it is the fault of the “IT” dept for not making it work, even though it doesn’t have the possibility to work. Managers love Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange because the latter loses mail left right and center, giving them plausible deniability for their claims that the mail was lost when they neglect a task. [...] hey love Microsoft Exchange because then people have to give them the benefit of the doubt about the mail having been lost whenever they use that excuse.”
Either way, back to ATMs, we need to encourage people to still use them and still pay with cash. Otherwise, we’re going to lose them. A society that cannot pay anonymously is a society that’s easier to censor, surveil, and abuse in all sorts of other ways. █
Summary: In order to separate the wheat from the chaff we’ve been working on simple, modular tools that process news and help curate the Web, basically removing the noise to squeeze out the signal
THE concept behind Free Software emanates from many programmers’ desire to not only produce useful software but also to share this usefulness with many other people, either in exchange for recognition or further improvements to that software.
Lately we’ve developed a number of programs (Free Software of course, GPLV3-licensed) that help produce/curate Daily Links. Some time later this month or next month we’ll properly explain what they are and how they work. Other people too deserve access to the toolsets. █
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