Avarice

This is a story about a white-collar crime that will never be punished. Like countless others, it is perpetrated by a rich white man, shrouded in secrecy, and obscured behind untold wealth and corporate lawyers. Hidden beneath layers of complexity, it is a simple case of fraud perpetrated by a CEO against the employees of his company. It is not the first time he has done this, nor will it be the last. And like most white-collar criminals, he will walk away unscathed and unaccountable while his company burns to the ground. And the lives of the employees who devoted years to build it, mistakenly assuming their time and efforts mattered, are left in ruins.
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This is the construct of Corporate America. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and whoever has the most money wins. The morals of civilized society do not apply to corporations. There is no such thing as doing the right thing or being a decent human being. Good does not triumph over evil. The powerful crush the weak and gain more power. Greed is the common denominator and rest assured; you can get away with anything if you have enough money.

Throughout the years, and within different companies, this CEO defrauded his employees, the government, and investors, abdicating all responsibility for his actions by conflating himself with the corporation and absolving himself of conscience. This story is about his latest casualty.
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CorpX is a tech startup. Despite ongoing and almost unprecedented influxes of cash and funding over many years, CorpX failed to gain significant traction in the marketplace. CorpX guzzled nearly $250M in investments, and after installing a rotating roster of CEOs, the holding company realized – as the old saying goes – this dog won’t hunt. Under the guise of new leadership, the CEO was brought in to clandestinely dismantle the company. There is nothing illegal about preparing to sell a company. But if you defraud employees by clawing back their stock options, forging their names on transfer paperwork, and then firing them all so you can retain their stocks to increase corporate equity, that is illegal.

The timeline is significant. In January 2020, the holding company decides CorpX is dead weight and will cut it loose in five months’ time. The CEO instructs employees that they need to turn over their stock options, telling them that they will be issued a new class of stock options in April 2020. An executive begins forging employee names to the transfer documents.

In March 2020, once the stock grab is complete, the CEO abruptly fires most of the company, citing unforeseen ramifications from the Coronavirus pandemic. Of course, these machinations were well underway before the pandemic crippled the economy, but it was the perfect cover to jettison employees, deflect scrutiny and consolidate equity. The employees were left to fend for themselves, with no severance, no assistance and no health insurance as the country plunges into the worst economic crash in American history and the pandemic rages uncontrolled.

There is no happy ending to this story. The little guy gets crushed. The CEO does not get his just comeuppance in the end. Quite the opposite. The CEO will get away with it and will not be held accountable for his egregious behavior. And then he will do it again and again because he is rich and white and male. This is the real Corporate America.