
Ask HN: Have you ever left a job to later realize the activities were illegal? - arthurcolle
If so, did you do anything about it after the fact, or did you just go about your life?
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muzani
I've worked on some which were not illegal but unethical. One got convicted
for corruption. Some dragged out projects as close to success as possible
without finishing, to charge more, or found ways to hold the client hostage.
One got banned, which was probably illegal, but not jail time type of illegal.
In some of these situations, there were SOPs on how to dispose of all evidence
within hours.

It's frustrating because it's like keeping a family secret. There is no
evidence and will never be. I often meet young people who speculate on what
happened and want some bullshit like innocent until proven guilty, or
statistics, or police reports. It is.. sort of like your uncle confessing to
an affair. You can't give evidence that it's happening without some betrayal
and nothing good will come out of it. They know how to keep it legal. All you
do is hurt your own credibility. The victims will often refuse to believe you
and want more proof anyway. But so far, all of them meet with karma.

My advice: don't do it. It's incredibly demotivating and while you often don't
need motivation to get something done, demotivation will keep you from getting
anything real done. Projects like these bleed talent and are full of
unpleasant people. And the ones who play with corruption and lies are also
likely to lie to you and exploit you.

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test_999
yes i know of a friend. he used to work for some b2b stay company in
bangalore, india, the lady partner was a fraud.

she used to do black magic, do drug dealings, run prostitution rackets to fund
her business.

he once realized this, he was threatened, if he will reveal it to anybody, he
will be murdered. he went to police and the entire scandal was exposed.

finally he is free-lancing as a go programmer.

~~~
arthurcolle
I wonder if her black magic stuff worked. I could use an easy win this sprint

~~~
cyberdrunk
I wonder if there are countries where, if you do black magic and it "works"
(e.g. you curse your competitor and subsequently bad stuff happens to him) you
can get sued and/or go to jail.

~~~
DayDollar
There is a whole continent, were that stuff is rampant. You get cursed with a
economic downward spiral..

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poormystic
Not quite, but I once left a job in which all the other employees were
illegally wiring equipment with no electrical registration. I told management
they were working illegally and the outcome was that they moved their
operations to Taiwan and nobody in New Zealand got the work. I was not
entirely gratified.

~~~
arthurcolle
A close friend of mine relayed a story about his employer doing what appears
to be an explicit violation of the Dodd-Frank Act, so I was just curious about
similar stories. Did you end up reporting it or not? I'm not one to stab
previous employers in the back but I mean corporate malfeasance ends up
hurting society in the aggregate, so I get that its a sticky subject for some.

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shawnk
Yess please let us know below.. so I can report it to the SEC and collect a
phat bounty

~~~
arthurcolle
I heard Elon sometimes tweets out some nonpublic material information yo,
check it out sometime. I think his twitter is @elonmusk.

~~~
dontcarethrow2
Hmm, I wouldn't trust that account. Promised to double my bitcoins a few weeks
back, still hasn't come through... Where to report?

~~~
arthurcolle
[https://god.api/v1/complaints](https://god.api/v1/complaints)

