Walmart Fires VP in Tech for Taking Daily Kickbacks Starting from $30K
ctol.digital
ctol.digital
It’s wild to me that big companies with all the resources would expose their IT systems in this way where they have no idea who is doing the work….
I gues this is in line with their normal practices, as they were unable to issue me a debit card that only works with a PIN, and can only issue cards where the PIN is optional.
Source: 1st hand experience being a provider of such services.
Having worked in call centres where strict compliance and security was critical, the reality is that doing things properly is expensive.
I'm sure there are organizations and outsourcing companies that skip it or treat it purely as a formality. I don't do that with my clients.
I only have recruiters from companies that do this sort of work reaching out to me on LinkedIn. Whole companies where you are hired based on resume keywords.
Citation: Any book about the 2008 financial crisis, or the 1998 crisis, or the 1987 crisis, e.g.
[0] 'The Quants', Scott Patterson
[1] 'When Genius Failed', Lowenstein.
[2] 'Demon of Our Own Design', Richard Bookstaber.
If this was a sourced article, it'd have the name of the exec.
This thread isn't going anywhere, you can feel free to discuss. But it doesn't belong on front page, flagging was the right move.
Disclaimer: The identity of the news submitter has been verified by us. However, we have not received any confirmation or verification from Walmart regarding the information provided.
See also:
* Unverified Walmart H-1B Scandal Rumors Claim VP Got Kickbacks, 1,200 Terminated, Spark Fears Among Indians: https://inews.zoombangla.com/unverified-walmart-h-1b-scandal...
* Walmart H-1B scandal rumors spark anxiety among Indian workers, company responds: https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/us-news/walmart-...
* Walmart visa scandal fears unfounded, company says firings not linked to H-1Bs: https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/walmart-h-...
wow i would think that for all the money paid to ERP vendors tracking five layers of contracts would not be a major issue.
but i guess unless people in positions of authority subject themselves to some sort of financial audit then it’s almost impossible to detect corruption related payments.
- Moral Mazes (1988), Robert Jackall
I wouldn’t be surprised to know there were agreements between this bigger company and the person in charge of selecting a contractor, it seems to be an extremely common practice.
Why does this make sense? Failing is failing. The only reason it could be true is that the giant corpo has deep projects to pay back for the failure (in theory) but does that work in practice? They've got lawyers for their lawyers and more lawyers for those lawyers. Guess who is going to out lawyer who.
Startups have no reputation. If they fail, you'll be asked why you picked them, and any answer you give is based on your judgment of their abilities, which was wrong since they failed. If you say it was to get X done cheaper, you're the cheapskate who wasted X$ trying to save Y$.
There are also very often situations where your corpo has used corpo X for 5 prior/current projects and is satisfied, so picking them also gives you the backing of those other projects, should something go wrong.
It partially makes sense, but it's also largely office politics. You really don't want to have a complex explanation when you're in the crosshairs of some angry bossman 2 tiers above your boss.
(and sometimes it's by design)
The corporation almost always overpays and it's the same providers getting all the money from all the corporations because they have a similar strategy for all of them.
It's been going on for a LOT longer than 2023.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executiv...
Disclaimer: The identity of the news submitter has been verified by us. However, we have not received any confirmation or verification from Walmart regarding the information provided
I take this to mean it's garbled at best, and just might be fictitious.
This thing got flagged so fast, I didn't even have time to unmoor my ill-gotten yacht.
Perhaps I'm too cynical but I'm not sure I believe this until a credible news source names the exec or has it substantiated by an engineer.
If you own your own company, it's usually not a big deal to let people wine and dine you lol
*per se
Not if there is a record of the tickets being given as a personal favor in exchange for a business favor.
Pure cash is a problem, but for employees in Sales there’s basically a schedule for when you give and when you expect exchanges of tickets/events/small gifts and rules for what can be accepted and it scales with the position. When I worked in the same office as sales the gifts that came in made Christmas a bonanza. Those really expensive luxury fruit baskets I personally won’t buy for myself were very common. Junior’s Cheesecake from prior to their mail order and grocery store business taking off was a huge deal. Sometimes we got socks and ties. A LOT of socks. They addressed it to the whole office so the 30 or so engineers got to partake with the 500 or so sales and support members.
At one company the CEO took a client to the Super Bowl (they wanted to go also, win win). Totally fine. I’ve been the technical lead on some deals and have gotten some of the perks like very expensive dinners, some token gifts (on the scale of a very nice box of chocolates), branded merch, etc. At one place I worked a gift card or cash equivalent was ok if it was reimbursing something (like your parking or flight) but otherwise had to be less than $100.
For most places I’ve worked the rules are essentially that if it’s “fun”, legal, and substantially less than your pay/commission it’s probably allowed; if it’s clearly a bribe it is not.
I found who that person is in that role, but there is also an x account that claims it is all not true and he is not fired.
Isn’t that kind of vs just saying something like “VP received $X amount of money from Y vendor to be selected”
“Contingent workforce infrastructure” is a term of art I haven’t heard yet, but in Google terms this is about red badges, likely offshore ones from staffing agencies.
And frankly, as someone who requests these kind of teams, it makes me question every interaction I’ve had in the past with the people who build these that has “pushed back” on me asking that we keep the recruiting network open globally and not just from some executive’s preferred country/area. For example I have in mind one exec who told me “I promised (unnnamed person) we would build a team in (redacted city)” and it was a lot of work to sidestep that
The Sopranos was a HBO show about a mob family. Historically, waste management in some cities has been controlled by the mob.
The Sopranos was a TV show about the Mafia. The Mafia is a criminal syndicate whose operations consist primarily of providing illegal drugs, prostitution, and charging companies in their territory for “protection” often from other groups, but also often from themselves. The show had the mafia use a waste management company’s services as a superficially legal reason to be paying these protection payments.
At least that’s my interpretation.
They do engage in racketeering to ensure that they own all the contracts in a certain region, and compete for territory, but they do often actually go and collect the waste, it's not just a front. And I think they did in the Sopranos too, although it was not explicitly depicted as far as I remember, just off-hand references.
The illegal part is in how they get rid of it. Often they take on high-value contracts for toxic waste products that are complex to handle in a compliant manner, and they just dump it wherever.
Obviously, this is quite corrupt; that person is supposed to be paid by Walmart to best represent their interests, not select the vendor based on who will best financially compensate them personally.
The Sopranos part is a reference to a TV show about the Mafia, in which (presumably, I haven't seen it), bribery schemes like this are common.
Mostly illegal.
The biggest kickback exceptions are airline mileage programs and hotel points where employees become incentivized to pick higher cost routes or stays to earn points.
>Technology executives with authority over contractor requisitions and interview processes can direct substantial volume toward "preferred" staffing shops. In exchange, these vendors provide kickbacks that, in Walmart's case, generated what sources estimate as millions in illicit payments over multiple years.
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