My therapist suggested I write this stuff down so here I go.
TLDR: fraud inside company ends up as hidden footnote.
My (37f if it matters) career at this company was somewhat long (8yr) and I worked in multiple departments and specialty projects along the way.
My prior company is a public one involved in specialty finance (but >1B in annual revenue and >8k employees). I was responsible for the migration of key operating systems.
We started out with contractors doing a lot of the development work as the rest of IT was involved in other projects. Over the 3+ years we mostly kept the contractors on (only letting go of the ones that weren’t performing) and slowly pulled in the FTEs as the project expanded scope as POCs proved positive. I was working on business requirements but midway through I was asked to build an enterprise data lake and manage an existing small team of business intelligence analysts. Well, when one of those analyst’s contracts expired, at the direction of my then VP (more story here if you want it!), I used one of our existing contracting documents to copy for updating and found out we were paying over 100k annually for our contractors (x30 at least for the project). What was surprising about the number was that it was for talent with mostly <5years experience.
Fast forward 3 months later, someone confides to me that they know my CIO&CTO is getting under the table perks from this contracting company. I reach out to our head of Legal (HOL) and tell him. He and I go back and forth (all in person or via phone call because the CIO/CTO can access all records across the company..) and one week later he brings me in for a conference call with an external lawyer (EL) I repeat the same stuff I told the HOL and then EL says, “do you know of anyone else that may have been involved?” At this point I stammered and HOL mutes the conference call, says “we know more than you do” and unmutes. I give two more names that were known associates and that was it.
3 weeks later, office is abuzz because HOL and security escorted all 3 names I mentioned plus 2 more (SVP-CIO&CTO, VP, Sr Mgr, Sr Mgr, and Mgr). I play dumb to everyone, call the HOL to make sure it was all related and closed up, confirmed my anonymity, etc.
So remember where I mentioned it was a public company…? They never reported the millions of $$ in overpayment (said SVP was a reportable “officer”); was still working with the contracting company 2 years later; HOL just sold >$1M worth of stock; and all involved received severance and are at their next new jobs with no one the wiser. I had to leave the company because my depression spiral put my mental health at risk, but seeing the notification of the stock sale brought it all back up.
Thanks for reading.