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What was the most illegal thing your workplace has done?
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Basically credit card theft.
Over twenty years ago, when I was pretty young and inexperienced, I answered a newspaper ad for IT/programming at a so-called "startup." It sounded great.
My first day was in someone's living room-turned office and I didn't actually have any real idea what the business was. I was told it was a financial company, but it was taking off like gangbusters. Relatively quickly, within days actually, we moved into a very nice class-A office building. The owner was a remarkably charismatic man and being in his presence made you feel warm and understood and like you had a world of possibilities around you. I felt like a badass: I had a good-paying job, worked in a beautiful and prestigious office, and had a boss who made me feel great.
I found out, however, he was basically just running a scam. Between about 2-4am, he would have TV spots running, selling naive housewives, unemployment breadwinners, alcoholics, etc a "system" to earn huge sums of money very quickly. His system? You find people selling notes. You find people who want to buy notes. You introduce them and take a commission. A huuuuuuge commission.
Was that illegal? I don't know. I kind of doubt the people in the ads were real, but my paychecks were clearing.
I learned that when his sales people (who worked late at night, when the infomercials ran) took orders, they would record everyone's credit card info. Then, the owner directed us to automatically sign them up for things they didn't ask for -- recurring subscriptions to his membership-based "note marketplace" website. This was before the Internet was so mainstream, and many people buying this package didn't even have a computer.
If people tried to place an order, and one credit card was declined, he'd just have them quietly try another card we had on file for them, without asking. If anyone complained, they'd obviously just refund the whole charge to avoid pissing off the credit card companies, but he was really just hoping no one would notice.
I quit pretty quickly and got a "real" real job.
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