No Payroll HR
A payroll company in upstate New York absconded with millions worth of employee and company funds.
About $30 million destined for paychecks and related tax payments went missing on Sept. 4 because of problems tied to MyPayrollHR, based in Clifton Park, N.Y. Workers at firms that used MyPayrollHR saw funds yanked back out of their bank accounts—in some cases twice—after another firm discovered the money backing the deposits wasn’t available.
Very cool! Thousands of employees not only didn’t get paid, but some were mistakenly debited twice by the processing company in an attempt to stem their losses. Our banking system rules.
What bothers me the most about what should be a relatively straightforward case of financial fraud, is that the police seem to think there’s something…complicated going on here?
The FBI searched the home of MyPayrollHR owner Michael Mann on Monday, an FBI spokeswoman said. “It’s going to be a complicated case,” said the spokeswoman, who declined to answer specific questions.
Not to get ahead of myself, but I think I’ve cracked this one:
Cachet’s attorney Wendy Slavkin said the file containing instructions for how to handle money collected from MyPayrollHR customers was manipulated. Money that should have moved into Cachet’s holding account instead moved into a different account at Pioneer Bank under the control of MyPayrollHR, she said.
Complicated! The money that was supposed to go to pay people was sent, instead, to a different account owned by the payroll company, and then some of it was paid into other accounts. Then, because the company clearly did nothing wrong, they abruptly closed their doors and told their clients to go elsewhere.
People get arrested every day for writing bad checks. I guess if you brazenly attempt to steal $26 million from workers, you don’t?
Online Dating Sucks
A ring of romance scammers impersonating US soldiers was busted in September, giving us a look into how these groups operate. The stories of the individuals taken in by these scams are pretty heartbreaking.
A woman had struck up a romance on a dating website with a man who said he was a United States soldier stationed overseas. He claimed to have more than $12 million worth of gold from Syria but needed help bringing it to the United States, so she sent him $93,000.
He sent back a photograph of an Israeli diplomat she was supposed to meet at the Baltimore airport who was going to bring her “two trunks with ‘family treasure’,” according to a criminal complaint. But he never showed up. The next day, she killed herself.
These cons seem ridiculous on their face, a variant of the Nigerian Prince emails, but they are effective because they take advantage of lonely people on dating websites. The scope is astounding:
The F.B.I. said it received nearly 18,500 complaints from victims of romance or similar internet frauds last year, with reported losses exceeding $362 million, up 71 percent from 2017.
So Does Online…Baby Shopping?
You really can get anything online!
For some people, finding a child to adopt through Instagram works out.
I read a lot of articles for this newsletter, and the linked Post story above made me push my chair back from my desk and spin in circles for a couple of minutes. Social media was a mistake.
After days of constant communicating, the Shorts began to realize something wasn’t right.
“She would never sign a doctor release form for us to be able to talk to her doctor,” Alyssa Short says. “She was really hesitant about giving information out so we could find a lawyer to work with her.”
There’s a lot to unpack here, but fortunately there do seem to be actual laws and procedures most potential adoptive parents are aware of, so they are less likely to believe expectant mothers who want them to pay for their doctor visits with Syrian gold bricks, or whatever.
The hashtag #hopingtoadopt has more than 45,800 posts from people using Instagram to connect with pregnant women.
I am a big proponent of adoption, and regular user of Instagram, but this was not a collab I saw coming.
My Job Sucks, and Also Might Be Criminal Fraud?
A friend of mine linked me to this post, from Best of Reddit, awhile back. It is a doozy.
For those of you not familiar with Theranos, I’ll give you a quick breakdown. A young, blonde woman with a normal voice raised hundreds of millions of dollars for her blood testing company, which claimed it could do hundreds of blood tests with a single drop of blood. The problem was that she had no science or medical training, the tech never worked, and it’s pretty clear she knew this and was running a nearly billion dollar fraud? Here’s what it was like to work there, according to this Redditor.
I have come to understand that in these meetings, it is recommended to be extremely selective about what you tell the bossmen. As in, ignoring the bulk of the evidence we've gathered that suggests that the formulation is not working, and instead present the one graph that looks okay and tell them that everything's passing with flying colors. I have to look them in the eye when my partner says these things and smile and nod.
I’m no expert, but that doesn’t sound very scientific to me!
The CEOs reward those who tell them exactly what they want to hear, and punish (fire) those who bring them problems and suggestions for improvement. Even supervisors who try to repair the system by holding their employees accountable for their data and give honest information to the CEOs - they do not last long here. Everything is image-driven because we're all aware we could be fired for not being optimistic enough.
The “CEOs” in this case, are Elizabeth Holmes and her ex-lover Sunny Balwani. Both of them are now facing criminal fraud charges, presumably because stealing from rich people is frowned upon. Holmes has had a pretty good life while awaiting trial, and has secretly married a hotel heir. She still has many defenders in Silicon Valley, including some of the people whose money she stole? Never underestimate the cult of personality when it comes to start-up founders, or dumb rich guys.
Short Cons
ArtNet - “An Artist Has Created an Installation Examining Socialite Scammer Anna Delvey’s Courtroom Fashion” (there’s also an Instagram account)
NY Post - “An unholy actor has been impersonating the Archbishop of New York on social media.”
FTC - “The FTC charged that the operation tricked companies and non-profits into paying for light bulbs and cleaning supplies they never ordered.”
Send all your hot tips, or requests for Syrian gold, to scammerdarkly@gmail.com