It's probably too late to do anything about a crooked boss, but I'd still like the Hive Mind's opinion... (long story inside)
I no longer work for said boss, but some of his business practices sort of stick in my craw and also make me wonder if I can be culpable years after the fact.
I worked for a small steel brokerage - Boss (owner), two salesmen, and me, who did all the clerical work as well as the payroll, and accounting (month-end reports, etc). As time went on, I noticed a definite distinction between the male employees and me. For example, I was the only employee who had the cost of her Blue Cross deducted from her paycheck. After I accepted the job, it turns out that one of my very unsavory responsibilites was to save the ink cartridges from our computer printers and the toner cartridges from the copier and then go back to Staples or OfficeMax and claim that they'd been empty when we'd opened the package. (I'm not making this up.) At the time, I couldn't really afford the cost of a lawyer to look into the situation, and I needed the insurance coverage, so I didn't squack.
When I hired in, I was told that after three years I'd be enrolled in the company's pension plan. After I'd been there three and a half years with no further info about the Plan, I asked Boss. His response was "I've decided not to add any more people to the plan." This, too, seemed illegal to me but his brother-in-law was an attorney, and I couldn't really afford to persue the issue.
While I worked there, I noticed that he avoided paying bills whenever possible. For example, when LTV Steel was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy, he bought thousands of tons of steel from them, which he re-sold. When the bills from LTV eventually came due, he instructed me to create fake debit memos from a variety of non-existant companies stating that the LTV steel was defective. He went so far as to have me put lint and such from a vacuum cleaner bag onto the copying machine glass so that the Xerox copies of said debit memos looked like they'd been in our files for many months. (I kept Xerox copies of his handwritten notes directing me to make such memos look more authentic, etc, just in case some time down the road LTV's lawyers came after me.)
Another "tactic" of his was to have five or six different registered business names, using mail drops as the mailing addresses. Each of those businesses had a phone number that ended up in our office, though, and I was actually instructed to used a different tone of voice and different name depending upon which line I answered. He also used these various "companies" to give credit references to one another. So, for example, if he was trying to buy steel from a new supplier, he'd give ABC and XYZ steel as credit references, both of which were part of his telephone bank. (His father is a CPA and handled the books for the company and apparently approved of all this deception.)
Anyway, I'm sure it's too late to hit him up for any personal compensation that I was entitled to during my years of employment (such as why did I have to pay for my health insurance and no one else did?), but every now and then I feel a twinge of guilt about all the deception I was involved in and I wonder if there's some way that I can turn him in? To whom, I don't know. And I'm also curious as to whether or not I'd be liable in years to come if one of his many schemes that I assisted with (and there are many, many that I was involved in that I haven't mentioned) are brought to light?
posted by anonymous to law & government (19 comments total)
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posted by decathecting at 3:48 PM on January 5, 2008