Brazen Scams By Engineers Uncovered
from the nice-work-if-you-can-get-it dept
Two separate stories of two different fairly amazing scams by engineers have come out recently. The first one is the more incredible one, and it involves a guy named William Grayson Hunter, who apparently secretly had two separate full time jobs at two different companies, but barely spent much time at either, instead "spending his days at bars, amusement parks and movie theaters," but sent in time cards, including some that billed for more than 24-hours a day. One of his two full-time employers, Aerospace Corp., just agreed to pay the government $2.5 million after it was investigating Hunter's work that was billed to the government at a premium. Of course, there's no punishment for Hunter, who died in 2010.The other story is a bit more conventional. A network engineer at Verizon Wireless repeatedly used the company's warranty contracts with Cisco to order replacements parts that weren't needed, and then sold them off and kept the money -- which apparently added up to $4.5 million. Like Hunter above, Michael Baxter had interests outside of work:
[Baxter] spent the proceeds on jewelry, cars, international travel and multiple cosmetic surgeries for his girlfriend, prosecutors said.Apparently, controls and audits on such things have gone out of style.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
This isn't surprising at all. Engineers are just as prone to dickish, unethical behavior, as anyone else.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So what did that guy who died in 2010 die from? Did he fall off a roller coaster screaming "woo hoo! my stupid boss believes anything I write"?
I think that death was a case of karma.
Well events like this will always happen and that is why audits exist.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Heh, well played sir!
N.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Too much credit
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Too much credit
I worked for such kind of firm once and there are legitimate cases where I have to switch hour slots allocated to one location to another without timingly notifying my immediate supervisor. (For a record, I worked for organizations at 3 locations at the same period)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
He was an engineer and was sent out to repair computers, he would declare the main board defunct, order a new one, fix the minor problem and sell the part. He was never caught.
Although did I hear he is in now in darkest Peru hiding from the tax man...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Then call up the engineer and ask why there's a Cisco router here with no parts in it and the customer is out of service and he has 10 minutes to replace what he nicked :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sounds like a lot of failure on the part of the employers
Apparently a very poor job at background checks.
"This person was hired before we had sophisticated methods to verify international degrees."
Oh, come on. This was 2003, not 1960. How difficult is it to pick up a phone and call 411 for the phone number for admissions and records at Oxford. Or go to their website (which existed in 2003) and grab the number there. Someone got lazy and now they are paying 2.5 million for it.
When I changed jobs in 1999, my employer, during a background check, managed to contact a manager for a company I worked for 7 years before had that went out of business between the time I left and the time I got hired by the company that did the background check. The manager had been laid off, yet somehow they miraculously found him. I find it hard to believe that in 2003 it was too difficult to verify whether a person received a Doctor's Degree from a prestigious college in England -- its not like Oxford gives out millions of Doctor's Degrees.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I heard similar case in Hong Kong
He was later found to be employed by a Slaughterhouse during the said period and have been prosecuted.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
America Third World Class Service.
The scandal of the Alabama poor cut off from water
Full house: Merged families coping under one roof
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/megaupload-contract/
Oh, this story will be good, someone pass me the popcorn.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Scam as old as the hills
I heard his prices were very reasonable as he managed to keep his material costs low.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Engineer vs. "Engineer"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Engineer vs. "Engineer"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Out of style? No, Out of Budget
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
scams unleashed
[ link to this | view in chronology ]