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Comment by chad_strategic | Hacker News Reader

This should be a Netflix problem?

I'm kind of confused how this is against the law? I can understand tax evasion component and maybe a little wire fraud. (Ignoring the tax evasion issue for a second)

They instilled confidence and the ability to award contracts to outside firms for this officer of the company. If company officer hired bad firms eventually he should have been fired for poor performance? Regardless how much kick back they provide him. It sounds like the contract were between two private citizens/entities. Why is the Federal Government doing internal investigation for Netflix?

Other than tax fraud, the only victim was Netflix. Not the American public?

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Bribery is against the law, I presume this is simply the result of a criminal investigation.

Also, bribery is insidious. Once some happens, there is considerable pressure for competitors to also engage in bribery to stay in business. So it is important to stop earlier, where you can, because over time it can be very hard to root out. Like murder and theft, it will happen sometimes, but you're trying to discourage it.

Okay, I'm not a lawyer and I'm trying to avoid a little work today etc. Here is a quick search of the term bribery, https://bribery.uslegal.com/solicitation-and-attempted-bribe...

Everything I run across refers to public official and public trust.

I wonder if there are any lawyer out there that can clarify this?

I own my own company. I should be able to award any all contracts to who bribes me the most money?

If you _own_ the company 100%, then sure. Since at that point it isn't really a bribe, it's a discount or a service in kind.

I am reasonably confident though that this Netflix VP didn't own Netflix. As such he was defrauding the company and/or stockholders and/or owners of the company, since they took money that was rightfully the companies.

To a very real extent this is stealing from the company. As a 100% owner of the company it is quite difficult to "steal" from the company, although it is definitely possible to commit tax fraud by pushing stuff through the company instead of through personal accounts.

Note that accepting a bribe and not declaring it as some form of income, either personal or business, is probably illegal in your jurisdiction, since at that point it is an undeclared income stream.

it amounts to stealing from your employer. Surely you believe theft should be illegal, even if the victim is not the government?

Kail was indicted in 2018 on 19 counts of wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud, and seven counts of money laundering.

Where is the thief charge?

> The U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Resource Manual Section 941.18 U.S.C. 1343 cites these as the key elements of wire fraud: “1) that the defendant voluntarily and intentionally devised or participated in a scheme to defraud another out of money; 2) that the defendant did so with the intent to defraud; 3) that it was reasonably foreseeable that interstate wire communications would be used; and 4) that interstate wire communications were in fact used.”

So wire fraud is defrauding money. Most people consider fraud to be a form of stealing, although it is obviously different in the eyes of the law. Either way, it is getting money that is not rightfully yours.

That is the explanation I was looking for. Theft is such a generic term.

Is it all that different that stealing from your employer? People agree that should be a crime. In this case he was stealing but using the vendor as a middleman.

What was he stealing from Netflix?

You can argue he stole engineering time from Netflix engineers who had to spend time implementing an inferior product.

VP is tasked to buy software.

VP selects company and spend $1M getting $100k kickback.

No different result than if VP has spent $900k and just stole $100k from his employer.

See above, the executive was never charged with thief.

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