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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Twenty years ago or so now I spent a summer working in a liquor store. I worked the register. How did they catch the guy who stole from the register ten years ago?
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Dec 20, 2022 04:09
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Twenty years ago or so now I spent a summer working in a liquor store. I worked the register. I probably don't have to say this to you if you're in the legal profession now, but it's illegal to dock anyone's pay simply because there's not enough money in the register. The store owner was blatantly breaking labor laws the entire time, and got away with it only because neither you nor anyone else in the store reported it.
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Dec 20, 2022 04:10
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I AM GRANDO posted:How did they catch the guy who stole from the register ten years ago? Outstanding warrant. I don't remember his case specifically but usually this kind of thing its either a random traffic stop or someone is applying for a job and the background check tells them they have a warrant so they go turn themselves in. Main Paineframe posted:I probably don't have to say this to you if you're in the legal profession now, but it's illegal to dock anyone's pay simply because there's not enough money in the register. The store owner was blatantly breaking labor laws the entire time, and got away with it only because neither you nor anyone else in the store reported it. Oh it was the least of his lawbreaking -- the dude literally had prostitutes come into his office during the work day while the store was open - total slimeball - but we were all kids, the amount was small and divided among us so below the "is this worth making trouble?" threshold, and this was the nineties, pre-ubiquitous-recording, so I don't think there was a camera in the entire store the entire time I worked there.] I'm actually curious now as to what would've happened if we had reported it. I imagine we'd have been fired ( he was the type dumb enough to do that) and we'd have sued for retaliatory firing and wage theft and if we were very lucky we'd have gone through an administrative process (eeoc?) and gotten a trivial payout. And that's the best case, because we were all white and affluent. There's another version of that story that ends with us all in jail for theft from the register. I did a little bit of employment law about ten years ago. Just one case that I remember going to litigation. Managed to get a woman a few month's worth of salary back and enough in attorney's fees to maybe cover a fraction of the work we put into the case. Not really worth the time or trouble except as a point of pride. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Dec 20, 2022 |
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Dec 20, 2022 04:15
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I AM GRANDO posted:How did they catch the guy who stole from the register ten years ago? Considering restitution is impossible and 10 years is beyond the statute of limitations for theft in every state I can think of, it's likely he was caught a long time ago, skipped out on court and got a capias, and didn't get picked up for several years.
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Dec 20, 2022 04:16
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Youth Decay posted:https://twitter.com/jordangreennc/status/1604923806174380038 Assuming that this is accurate (and it's like fourthhand speculation, why would you just assume the FBI isn't going to do anything about it?
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Dec 20, 2022 04:25
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cat botherer posted:If wage theft happened to me, I'd want the people responsible to go to jail, just like if they stole it from me using a more stereotypical poor-person method. I hardly think I'm unusual in this. yeah, did you miss the very next sentence? that bit you quoted is about the state of the system, not my personal feelings on it
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Dec 20, 2022 04:27
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My understanding is that FBI is really aggressive about groups that screw with infrastructure.
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Dec 20, 2022 04:27
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Considering restitution is impossible and 10 years is beyond the statute of limitations for theft in every state I can think of, it's likely he was caught a long time ago, skipped out on court and got a capias, and didn't get picked up for several years. My state officially has no statute of limitations but yeah in this case I believe it was an old warrant they just hadn't served on him. I'm going from memory on that though and could be wrong ( and wouldn't want to go into any more precise detail anyway). The specific details of each case don't matter that much anyway for purposes of this discussion. The larger point is that the entire system is set up such that some people have to go hire a lawyer to get justice, and other people get to use the criminal system to force what are or should be civil judgments. A business steals from you, go get a lawyer, good luck. A business says you stole from it? You don't need to get a lawyer, you'll have one appointed -- because you'll be locked up and charged with a crime. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Dec 20, 2022 |
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Dec 20, 2022 04:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Twenty years ago or so now I spent a summer working in a liquor store. I worked the register. Yep. = (
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Dec 20, 2022 04:56
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:My state officially has no statute of limitations but yeah in this case I believe it was an old warrant they just hadn't served on him. I'm going from memory on that though and could be wrong ( and wouldn't want to go into any more precise detail anyway). ... how does one even get any sort of reliable testimony for something that happened so long ago (...setting aside the issue in cases that are prosecuted under what weirdly counts as a "speedy trial" in the usual cases)? And really, if someone has stayed out of trouble for ten years, maybe the prosecutor really should consider plea bargaining them for probation + a whole bunch of community service or something, they don't exactly seem like a threat to the community 
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Dec 20, 2022 04:58
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If prosecutors were always competent and rational and fair my job wouldn't need to exist
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Dec 20, 2022 05:01
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Main Paineframe posted:I probably don't have to say this to you if you're in the legal profession now, but it's illegal to dock anyone's pay simply because there's not enough money in the register. The store owner was blatantly breaking labor laws the entire time, and got away with it only because neither you nor anyone else in the store reported it. This sounds close to victim-blaming, and elides the very real and structurally-inherent disparities in power, knowledge and status between employer and employees that may result in the employees not knowing about their formal avenues of recourse or not daring to exercise their nominal rights under the legal system. Would you say to the victims of Harvey Weinstein that "Harvey was breaking sexual assault laws the entire time, and got away with it only because neither you nor anyone else in the production house reported it"? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 20, 2022 12:36
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fizzy posted:This sounds close to victim-blaming, and elides the very real and structurally-inherent disparities in power, knowledge and status between employer and employees that may result in the employees not knowing about their formal avenues of recourse or not daring to exercise their nominal rights under the legal system. I don't see how this is strawmanning. MPF is literally saying that Hieronymous's boss got away with it because they didn't report him. That's victim blaming.
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Dec 20, 2022 16:13
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Fister Roboto posted:I don't see how this is strawmanning. MPF is literally saying that Hieronymous's boss got away with it because they didn't report him. That's victim blaming. generally speaking, law authorities are not aware of crimes that go unreported
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Dec 20, 2022 16:16
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Wells Fargo paying $3.7 billion in fines and refunds for Wells Fargo things https://www.consumerfinance.gov/abo...posit-accounts/quote:According to today’s enforcement action, Wells Fargo harmed millions of consumers over a period of several years, with violations across many of the bank’s largest product lines. The CFPB’s specific findings include that Wells Fargo: quote:Enforcement action
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Dec 20, 2022 16:20
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:generally speaking, law authorities are not aware of crimes that go unreported If they had reported it other things would happen besides the authorities finding out, for example being fired. It's not as simple as tell the government and get your $20 back.
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Dec 20, 2022 16:25
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:generally speaking, law authorities are not aware of crimes that go unreported Well yeah, and I assume Hieronymous was aware of that as well. Everyone knows that unreported crimes don't get prosecuted. Why did that need to be pointed out? Like fizzy said, it reveals a lack of understanding for why those crimes go unreported - because of the power imbalance and fear of reprisal. The comparison to sexual assault may not be very charitable, but the exact same power dynamic is at work.
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Dec 20, 2022 16:27
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Bear Enthusiast posted:If they had reported it other things would happen besides the authorities finding out, for example being fired. It's not as simple as tell the government and get your $20 back. i think we should not engage in victim blaming here (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 20, 2022 16:31
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Nothing bad has ever happened from intentionally getting law enforcement involved in your life! Back the blue!
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Dec 20, 2022 16:34
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Cops aren’t the ones going after wage claims lol
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Dec 20, 2022 16:37
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Tiny Timbs posted:Cops aren’t the ones going after wage claims lol Would you expect someone who doesn’t speak much English and may be undocumented to know that? I’m describing here the three+ individuals local community action groups had to picket for outside restaurants to recover stolen wages because no law enforcement entity in the state was interested in doing anything.
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Dec 20, 2022 16:42
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Fister Roboto posted:I don't see how this is strawmanning. MPF is literally saying that Hieronymous's boss got away with it because they didn't report him. That's victim blaming. Victim blaming in service of defending or dismissing the perpetrator of wrongdoing is obviously hosed, but all things not being black and white, it would be objectively better if mistreatment (of employees or women or both) was always reported and pushed back against. quote:"Harvey was breaking sexual assault laws the entire time, and got away with it only because neither you nor anyone else in the production house reported it" Is that factually inaccurate? Wouldn't say it to a victim of abuse, but it reads like a true statement. Bear Enthusiast posted:If they had reported it other things would happen besides the authorities finding out, for example being fired. It's not as simple as tell the government and get your $20 back. Fister Roboto posted:Well yeah, and I assume Hieronymous was aware of that as well. Everyone knows that unreported crimes don't get prosecuted. Why did that need to be pointed out? Like fizzy said, it reveals a lack of understanding for why those crimes go unreported - because of the power imbalance and fear of reprisal. The comparison to sexual assault may not be very charitable, but the exact same power dynamic is at work. Yeah, it's all about the relationship to power. If a dude smacks some strangers rear end I'd love to see her smack his dumb face, but I understand the myriad reasons why somebody wouldn't take that action. A world where everybody stood up to bullies and abusers without thought to their personal well being would be a world with far fewer assholes, but obviously systems and culture that foster and enable that abuse are the problem.
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Dec 20, 2022 16:43
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Kalli posted:Wells Fargo paying $3.7 billion in fines and refunds for Wells Fargo things https://www.consumerfinance.gov/abo...posit-accounts/ at what point can they just dissolve wells fargo, it's like a criminal enterprise now
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Dec 20, 2022 16:44
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lobster shirt posted:at what point can they just dissolve wells fargo, it's like a criminal enterprise now Yeah no poo poo. Feels like RICO territory with multiple billion dollar fines in the last decade.
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Dec 20, 2022 16:45
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BRJurgis posted:Victim blaming in service of defending or dismissing the perpetrator of wrongdoing is obviously hosed, but all things not being black and white, it would be objectively better if mistreatment (of employees or women or both) was always reported and pushed back against. Hierarchical systems select for people who are willing to forgo their humanity and duties to other humans for. The Catholic Church and Church or Mormon, the way Bill Clinton still gets feted, we refuse to destroy or even really seriously restrain institutions and individuals because as a society we worship power more than justice.
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Dec 20, 2022 16:46
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Sub Par posted:Yeah no poo poo. Feels like RICO territory with multiple billion dollar fines in the last decade. With this, they're up somewhere over $14 billion in the last decade in penalties and fines for not following the remedies they agreed to. They absolutely should not exist anymore.
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Dec 20, 2022 17:02
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If the goverment can figure out if joe minimum wage is cheating his taxes they should be able to figure out if companies are doing wage theft. I don't necessarily mean they have the immediate means to, I mean in the sense of a just world, there should be regulations or something.
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Dec 20, 2022 17:03
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Oxyclean posted:If the goverment can figure out if joe minimum wage is cheating his taxes they should be able to figure out if companies are doing wage theft. There are regulations galore. What there isn't is funding for the IRS to be able to do its job on the big boys thanks to a decades long propaganda campaign by the right wing to paint the IRS as evil moneygrabbers out to randomly audit you and ruin your life just for lulz and making increasing funding to the IRS a political nonstarter. Nobody is going to not vote for you for not increasing IRS funding so there's little political will to do so.
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Dec 20, 2022 17:07
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Oracle posted:There are regulations galore. What there isn't is funding for the IRS to be able to do its job on the big boys thanks to a decades long propaganda campaign by the right wing to paint the IRS as evil moneygrabbers out to randomly audit you and ruin your life just for lulz and making increasing funding to the IRS a political nonstarter. Nobody is going to not vote for you for not increasing IRS funding so there's little political will to do so. Why not just redirect the money internally to focus on larger offenders? Are they prevented from deciding how to spend their own budget?
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Dec 20, 2022 17:27
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Oracle posted:There are regulations galore. What there isn't is funding for the IRS to be able to do its job on the big boys thanks to a decades long propaganda campaign by the right wing to paint the IRS as evil moneygrabbers out to randomly audit you and ruin your life just for lulz and making increasing funding to the IRS a political nonstarter. Nobody is going to not vote for you for not increasing IRS funding so there's little political will to do so. irs funding was significantly increased this year specifically to give them greater resources to go after rich tax cheats! as you might guess it is now a republican party plank to try to undo that
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Dec 20, 2022 17:28
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:generally speaking, law authorities are not aware of crimes that go unreported This is just more victim blaming. Please stop. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 20, 2022 18:12
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Bear Enthusiast posted:If they had reported it other things would happen besides the authorities finding out, for example being fired. It's not as simple as tell the government and get your $20 back. In that specific instance, it was because none of us at the time had a drat clue that we even could, and the amounts were small enough that we never got mad enough to think about doing anything. In retrospect he was probably also violating the rule about posting those EEOC workplace notices. If those were even required in the nineties. For what it's worth the dude also made me drive his car after I told him I couldn't drive stick, and I heard he had to rebuild his transmission a month or two later, so karma circled back as it were Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Dec 20, 2022 |
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Dec 20, 2022 18:23
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fizzy posted:This sounds close to victim-blaming, and elides the very real and structurally-inherent disparities in power, knowledge and status between employer and employees that may result in the employees not knowing about their formal avenues of recourse or not daring to exercise their nominal rights under the legal system. I don't know what sort of circumstances would ever lead to me talking to the victims of Harvey Weinstein, but the fact that his misconduct went unreported to both authorities and the media for decades despite being an "open secret" in Hollywood is certainly an important thing that shouldn't be ignored when discussing his crimes! And in fact, the systematic and social forces at work were something I was specifically alluding to in my post. Even putting aside questions of power relationships and potential retaliation, a lot of people don't even know that poo poo like paycheck-docking is illegal. And it wasn't clear from Hieronymous Alloy's post whether he knew that, either at the time or now. Oxyclean posted:If the goverment can figure out if joe minimum wage is cheating his taxes they should be able to figure out if companies are doing wage theft. There are regulations. But if the employer decides to lie on their paperwork, there aren't necessarily any easy and reliable methods of independently verifying their claims. The employer controls the timesheets, the schedule, and the payroll system, so if they tell you one thing and they tell the government a different thing, they can easily make sure all the documentation matches up with what they tell the government. That makes it difficult to identify any discrepancies without the involvement of the employees.
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Dec 20, 2022 18:35
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selec posted:Why not just redirect the money internally to focus on larger offenders? Are they prevented from deciding how to spend their own budget? Because if you have to choose between laying off all the people who process run of the mill tax returns, or hiring one or two dudes to go after the big whales, you are likely going to choose to not lose more people than you already have. People who know all the tax loopholes, scams and various methods rich businesses and billionaires use for tax avoidance tend to make a lot of money.... finding loopholes, scams and various methods of tax avoidance for rich businesses and billionaires. They don't come cheap, and having to dig through the reams of paperwork, shell corporations, subpoenaing various international banks etc is also neither cheap nor quick.
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Dec 20, 2022 18:44
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selec posted:Why not just redirect the money internally to focus on larger offenders? Are they prevented from deciding how to spend their own budget? Going after the big offenders isn't cost productive because over a certain threshold they just spend the money on lawyers instead and you don't recoup it. There are several reasons most major corporations end up paying 0 in taxes every year. One of those reasons is law written to help them, another is good lawyers which they can afford. Tax prosecution makes money the same way ordinary prosecutors make their numbers: large volumes of low level offenders.
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Dec 20, 2022 18:54
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Oracle posted:Because if you have to choose between laying off all the people who process run of the mill tax returns, or hiring one or two dudes to go after the big whales, you are likely going to choose to not lose more people than you already have. People who know all the tax loopholes, scams and various methods rich businesses and billionaires use for tax avoidance tend to make a lot of money.... finding loopholes, scams and various methods of tax avoidance for rich businesses and billionaires. They don't come cheap, and having to dig through the reams of paperwork, shell corporations, subpoenaing various international banks etc is also neither cheap nor quick. the issue is going after the big whales requires way way way more than one or two dudes those guys have teams of lawyers and you are litigating the economic reality of extraordinarily complex transactions (they are extraordinarily complex precisely to obscure economic reality), the IRS has tried going after rich tax cheats and its hard, takes years, and has a high chance of failure (it is made harder by the rich tax cheats buying senators who then threaten the IRS's funding) Hieronymous Alloy posted:Going after the big offenders isn't cost productive because over a certain threshold they just spend the money on lawyers instead and you don't recoup it. There are several reasons most major corporations end up paying 0 in taxes every year. One of those reasons is law written to help them, another is good lawyers which they can afford. it is cost-effective. it's just not cost-effective if you don't have the money and political will to see it through.
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Dec 20, 2022 18:57
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evilweasel posted:
This seems like a true Scotsman esque argument to me. Given current political realities "sufficient money and political will" seems an ask on par with, say. . . At that point President Bernie is making communism real anyway already. Like, are we reversing the Holder Doctrine here?
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Dec 20, 2022 19:03
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evilweasel posted:the issue is going after the big whales requires way way way more than one or two dudes Personally I think they should do like France and give the IRS a percentage of all tax money they bring in from the big whales to help fund going after more. But honestly we really need to just revamp our tax code top to bottom its a loving mess.
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Dec 20, 2022 19:41
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:This seems like a true Scotsman esque argument to me. Given current political realities "sufficient money and political will" seems an ask on par with, say. . . At that point President Bernie is making communism real anyway already. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444 this is the study that justified the increased budget and you will note (a) it increases audits of the rich; and (b) increases revenue we have the political will to pass it because, again, we passed it this year, we just didn't before. the irs didn't have the money before. Oracle posted:The point was they could only afford one or two dudes to go after the big at the expense of laying off all the rank and file ordinary guys at current budget levels. irs agents cost, roughly, the same regardless of who you are going after, this is a bizzare argument. the irs can afford to go after many low-income individuals or a handful of high-net-worth individuals given the same budget and headcount. the issue isn't that agents that go after rich people cost 10x per head what agents going after poor people cost. evilweasel fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Dec 20, 2022 |
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Dec 20, 2022 19:49
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evilweasel posted:https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444 Ok, fair enough I guess. I may be succumbing to cynicism poisoning. It's hard for me to believe that increased IRS enforcement won't in turn lead to a political backlash that undoes these steps forwards -- our system does not seem resilient against such shocks. Gotta believe better things are possible I guess.
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Dec 20, 2022 20:16
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