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Comment by adjkant | Hacker News Reader

This is frankly incredible the more that comes out. Paying someone 4.5M in 12 months and then saying everything they claimed is false is some Olympic level gymnastics. I think this level of cover-up is bigger than many reasonable people who thought Uber was guilty expected.

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Nonetheless, Uber paid a $3 million settlement to the lawyer who wrote the letter in addition to the $4.5 million paid to Mr. Jacobs. As part of the deal, Mr. Jacobs was kept on as a security consultant, Ms. Padilla testified. His job: investigating the claims made in the letter his lawyer wrote.

Mr. Jacobs received $2 million up front and was to receive $1 million spread over 12 months and $1.5 million in stock, also spread out over 12 months.

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I think his job is one of those "I can do this job from home" Fightclub type jobs.

So they paid him to investigate claims they argue are baseless? That doesn't make any sense.

It does not make any sense at all. It does not ring true. It will not ring true to a jury either.

On the contrary, it's security done right!

There was no evidence of issues, yet they will still have a look to make sure of it.

You seem incredibly biased. Do you have a dog in this battle? Would you mind revealing your real name and employer, please? Or do you need to stay anonymous? Your relationship with the facts has a familiar ring to it. Kellyanne?

Maybe I'm missing a joke here but he or she is right. "we have no reason to believe any of this is true but we will investigate it to be sure" is more than we expect most companies to do.

That being said I doubt any of us honestly believe those words from Uber.

You must be missing something. I think you missed the part about paying the guy AND his lawyer an enormous pile of money, then continuing to employ the guy who reported it, and who they're now calling an untrustworthy lying extortionist.

Those words just don't ring true no matter who they came from, and Uber's recent pay-off of a hacker who breached their customer data follows the exact same pattern.

Go back and read the article carefully, please. I'll repeat thisisit's pointed questions for you to address after you've gotten your head around the facts:

>I am sorry but do you mean companies should pay off a whistle-blower rather than say - >a. litigate, if the claims are baseless >b. In case the claim has substance to try and rectify the issue along with responsible disclosure?

After getting your head around all that, do you really think the guy who said "The fact that two qualified employees, a lawyer and a security constant, getting a similar sum should hint that it is common." sounds unbiased?

I just wanted to outline that investigating baseless claims if perfectly normal. How could they even be qualified of baseless fore sure if they were not investigated?

The payout is a different matter, that we both agree doesn't contribute to their defense.

Poe's law

If that were the case, doing it right would be hiring someone external at a reasonable rate to demonstrate and ensure impartiality, given the gravity of the subject claims. Even if the good intentions were there, the optics are all wrong (particularly the fee), which is what will matter to the jury. Throwing him under the bus while paying him to investigate the driving habits of the bus is a pretty interesting smell.

It seems more plausible (though of course I'm not claiming this is the case) that they paid him to help root out and destroy the evidence for claims they knew were well-founded before someone else raised them.

At least according to the article, they didn't just pay him, they paid his lawyer too.

If that doesn't scream "hush money" I don't know what does. What possible reasonable excuse for giving the lawyer millions could they possibly come up with? I get the feeling that I'm somehow reading this wrong as that seems like that's separate from any compensation the lawyer arranged with his client.

I don't see how a lawyer could accept what is effectively bribe money without getting disbarred...

A lawyer will probably earn more than that in a lifetime, so why would he accept?

Because he still has the rest of his lifetime this way?

Nobody accepting a bribe plans on being caught. I expect this is a similiar case.

What's the "bribe" here? It's unlawful to bribe an official (to subvert the will of the people by subverting individual government employees). It's unlawful to bribe a witness in an actual current court case. There are doubtless other particular instances of unlawful "bribery". Which of them does this fit into?

That’s how they paid they lawyer’s fee. Instead of a $7.5 million settlement to the client, with the lawyer then taking at 40% contingency fee, the settlement splits it into two checks separately paid. Has to do with how the payment is reported to the IRS on 1099 forms

Does a 40% contingency fee seem normal here? The article makes it seem like this didn't escalate past sending a strongly worded extortion letter. Is it normal for lawyers to take such a huge cut for something that never went to court? Also, how could this have ever gone to a civil suit? From the sound of it, the letter detailed a bunch of shady, illegal things that Uber was doing but the plaintiff wouldn't have had standing for that would he?

We also found out that they used techniques and software specifically for not leaving any paper trails, so realistically, they could've done all sorts of things that Waymo would never find out about in discovery.

That seems reasonable considering the costs of living in the valley. As evidenced before, the standard comp is around 120M for a high level manager in a big tech company (bonus paid by google to Levandowski before he left).

4M looks like a normal package for a middle employee.

The fact that two qualified employees, a lawyer and a security constant, getting a similar sum should hint that it is common.

Uber didn't argue anything along those lines at all in court and attempted to justify the payments with something even less believable, potential court expenses and reputation risk. You may have missed it in the article, but they effectively admitted to paying the lawyer to keep his or her mouth shut.

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