Sounds like they were caught red handed, mens rea and all. Any chance this ends up with serious repercussions like prison time?
When has any staff member of a FAANG company faced prison time for a similar crime? Not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious though my instinct is to say 'never'.
1. They do something to harm the government (i.e Tax evasion)
2. They do something to harm a Rich person
3. They do something to harm another multinational corporation
If they just harm a few citizens... the government literally does not care
The fines and judgement they paid were but a tiny fraction of the cumulative wages they stole. The lesson was that wage theft is profitable.
Until we start imposing a corporate death penalty in situations like this there will be no reason for companies to not simply do the economic calculation and decide the defrauding their employees is the right thing to do for their bottom line, one that can be optimized by lowering the risk of prosecution by better obscuring the crime or building up a legal team that can tie up the largest of nation states in court for decades.
> Another important distinction between civil and criminal law is the type of penalty paid for being found guilty. In a criminal case, if the individual charged with a crime loses the case, they’re likely facing incarceration or some type of probation. For civil cases, the resolution to a case doesn’t result in the “losing” party going to jail. Often the judgement results in a financial penalty or an order to change behavior.
https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/justice-studies/blog/civil...
I think it is reasonable to presume that by paying it's contractors, Google and by virtue it's executive team was representing to said contractor that they were being paid according to the labor laws. Google executives knew that this was not the case, and withheld that information, likely in order to increase their own personal bonuses. That would seem to me to be theft by deception, illegal in every nation on earth as far as I can tell.
That's not even to mention the shareholders, who were defrauded as the company financials do not accurately reflect their labor liabilities. This in turn may have increased the value of Google stock, that then the people committing fraud around wages receive as a considerable portion of their compensation.
If knowingly lying for personal gain and costing potentially tens of thousands of people life changing amounts of money isn't fraud, what is?
[0]https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-fraud-act-200...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-22/everyt...
Have any numbers on this implication? How much is life changing in your opinion? Is there evidence this many people were shorted near that amount?
It's hard to imagine that local wages are life changing for those "potentially tens of thousands of people" but paying market clearing wages would be significantly different.