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Comment by jagged-chisel | Hacker News Reader

I think I missed something. They later offered the guy the world to solve problems. He declined and then complains they wouldn’t provide the tools he needed.

Part of “name your price” should include whatever tools - up to and including ownership of processes.

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Yeah I think something was missed. My wild speculation is that the person thats "causing issues" has a privileged position with the owners. The owners are unwilling to completely cut this person out of the business, and that is what he means when he says that the owners won't provide the tools he needed.

My mind immediately went to organized crime. Money laundering for people who he rather didn't know his name.

This looks like a clue:

"I even worked on translating Archivista’s interface into Italian, since it wasn’t yet localized, just to make it easier for users."

No, that's not a clue :-) I've just replied, clarifying this part, to the previous comment

Got it, it was disorganized crime, not organized. ;)

Yes, exactly :-D

It wasn't a laminates company, was it?

I’m the author of the post. I hinted, in a cryptic sentence near the end, that I necessarily had to leave out the worst parts of the story. No, no organized crime. But yes, there were people who appropriated resources that weren’t theirs and used every tool at their disposal to avoid scrutiny. To keep it vague, let’s just say some of the people involved had means that could seriously harm the businesses and their owners. And since these were primary businesses, that would have been a serious problem. The owners, knowing this, tried to find solutions but couldn’t really “afford” to remove the people involved. To be specific, in the end the owners themselves were aware of what was happening, but hoped to resolve it with a few more checks. Eventually, I realized that as long as there was enough money for everyone, they were okay with the ongoing theft.

Its better to know who is stealing from you (and how much) than not - sometimes the evil you know is better than the evil you dont.

if you weren't getting paid for this - why get involved in the first place?

I've been paid for doing my job: creating the infrastructure, configuring stuff, etc.

Alright, I was thinking this was just the case of helping a friend

Sounds like very straightforward tax evasion. The business brings in lots of cash, doesn't pay taxes, obscures the books enough so that there's no smoking gun. Some of the people participating in the scheme are skimming, but maybe less than the taxes would be, or maybe the owners are also implicated and would face criminal penalties themselves, so it's better for everyone just to keep it going and keep the books messy. Don't need mafiosos from TV for that.

You can have this kind of fraud without tax evasion, by abusing invoicing, business expenses and reimbursements. That's a reason people like when accounting doesn't work properly.

Not saying there was zero tax evasion, but this seems like a separate issue.

I'm just speculating about what kind of fraud was happening, but it seems pretty apparent that there was some

Yes, definitely agree.

> as long as there was enough money for everyone, they were okay with the ongoing theft.

Cue @patio11: The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero [0]

0. https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

They had other options:

- if they really accepted the theft then normalize it and pay the thieves more and get them to stop thieving

- sell the businesses and let the theft be someone else's problem

- get the authorities involved

I thought that just means they're buying him out?

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