Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors
The DOJ press release is clearer than this article is:<p><a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executive-convicted-receiving-bribes-and-kickbacks-companies-contracting" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executiv...</a><p>Some fun details:<p>Kail did his criming through a shell LLC he set up called "Unix Mercenary".<p>He took between 10-15% of the total billings for each of the companies he hooked up with this scheme. None of those companies were charged (more's the pity).<p>They got him on mail fraud, wire fraud, honest services fraud, and money laundering. The victim of the fraud was, of course, Netflix itself.<p>Additional fun facts from PACER:<p>He's seeking to exclude his shares in Sumo Logic and Netskope from forfeiture, arguing that they were largely the result of his own hard work, which takes some serious chutzpah.<p>All of this apparently happened back in 2014 (the conviction is recent). If you're wondering what Netflix thought of all this, Kail apparently left Netflix for a job at Yahoo, from which he was fired after Netflix found out about his scheme and told Yahoo.<p>Kail's sentencing memorandum is a fun read (again: chutzpah). For instance, this gem:<p><i>Further, though Mr. Kail complained of problems with Sumologic (as one would see with any new startup), the product itself was “useful,” according to Ashi Sheth. (R.T. Vol. 8, p. 1670-71). As described below, at the time, Sumologic saved Netflix from paying for a far more expensive and inferior product called Splunk.</i>