from Hacker News

Former Netflix CTO convicted for taking bribes

by frb on 5/1/21, 3:06 AM with 6 comments

• by randompwd on 5/1/21, 10:11 AM

  Googling his name seems to indicate that he was not CTO but "VP of IT Operations at Netflix"

  https://onalytica.com/blog/posts/interview-mike-kail/

• by magneticnorth on 5/1/21, 5:25 AM

  690k, while a lot of money, doesn't seem like it's worth it at Netflix CTO level. He had to have been making many multiple of that every year; why risk that kind of career for that level of payout?

• by jtsiskin on 5/1/21, 9:00 PM

  Essentially he would first become an “advisor” for the B2B IT company offering services to Netflix, and receive share options or large sums of cash. Then he would sign an agreement with Netflix. No clue how he thought he would get away with this.

  For an summary of how this worked, see the pdf in the embedded tweet. There’s many examples:

  “Evidence at trial showed that several more companies paid kickbacks to Kail. In 2013, Platfora, Inc. sought to do business with Netflix. In June 2013 – a time when Kail was seeking to buy his Los Gatos residence – he met with Platfora employees and signed an evaluation agreement for Netflix engineers to test Platfora’s product, a data analytics software program. On July 13, 2013, Kail met with Platfora’s CEO for drinks and later thanked him in an email, saying “I look forward to helping you in both a Netflix and Advisory capacity.” Two days later, Kail signed an “advisory” agreement with Platfora that provided him with the right to purchase up to 75,000 options, approximately .25% of the company. Shortly thereafter, Kail provided Platfora with Netflix’s internal information about Platfora’s competitor’s contract bid price to Netflix. In September 2013, while being a paid advisor to Platfora, Kail signed on behalf of Netflix a multi-stage $250,000 per year contract with Platfora. Kail then urged his Netflix employees to find a use for the product, despite their objections and preference for a competing product that Netflix was already paying for. When an inquiry from the Netflix CEO ensued, Kail falsely denied that he was formally working with Platfora. Kail resigned from his advisory position at Platfora the next week.”

• by Barrin92 on 5/1/21, 7:53 AM

  > "He was eventually indicted on charges of taking $690,000 in kickbacks from tech companies that had contracts with Netflix, a scheme the company said it uncovered based on reviewing emails in his work account."

  It's always astonishing to me how some people conduct crime. If you're engaging in six-figure sum bribery maybe don't put incriminating evidence into plain-text communication that's stored on the server of the company you're ripping off