My mother always wanted to marry a millionaire. Unfortunately (for me, at least) she failed in that objective, although she did have some close encounters. Her enthusiasm waned considerably following one such occasion.
“I followed this multimillionaire up to the bar,” she once told me, “but I retreated as soon as I heard him place his order.” What was the problem? “He ordered a double bitter lemon,” she said scornfully, “neat.”
From then on my mother consoled herself by deciding that most millionaires were frauds anyway. She knew of course that the opposite was not true-most frauds are not millionaires. But some of them are. And many of these seem to be active in the mobile telecommunications industry.
It’s a well-known and well-publicized fact that customer fraud costs mobile operators millions of dollars a year. That’s “customer” as in “subscriber” of course. But subscribers themselves can be the victims of fraud, as can other players in the mobile industry such as investors, shareholders and employees in the manufacturing and support sectors. All of these players are having a hard time at present-and some of the reasons could involve fraud.
Mobile operators are accused of exploiting subscribers through excessive international roaming charges. Not only through interoperator connect rates, fixed in a suspiciously cozy fashion by the mobile operators themselves, but also by mechanisms such as sneakily reverting to per-minute rather than per-second billing. And how many subscribers realize international roaming costs could be dramatically reduced by the introduction of optimized routing? The technology exists but has not been implemented due to lack of interest from operators. Evidence of fraudulent thoughts, according to some observers.
Observers such as financial and investment analysts are also under attack. Accusations that they have hyped up the prospects of companies with the aim of getting their business are increasingly being heard. Many would claim strong evidence for fraudulent activities here.
But the hundreds of thousands of employees who have lost their jobs during the past few months should be more concerned about fraudulent activities within their own management rather than the analyst community. Paying obscene amounts to top executives is justified-by those very same top executives-as merely reflecting the market. If you want the top talent then you have to pay for it. But it doesn’t stop there.
If the top talent is successful they are rewarded with further enormous bonuses. Just for doing their job. If they are not successful they seem to still get rewarded over and above their basic packages. It’s not their fault that targets have not been met-there’s a slump in the whole industry-they can’t be blamed. Try telling that to the employees they’ve made redundant. Try convincing those ex-employees that this doesn’t somehow smell fraudulent. Shareholders of many companies are certainly beginning to feel that way.
But it’s the `top talent’ who have been acknowledged disasters that concerns me most. They have destroyed the companies they were hired to manage. They made bad decisions. It’s primarily their fault, not the effects of an industry slowdown. These guys have been fired. But these guys often walk away with millions.
To me, that stinks. Employees are made to pay for the failings of their top executives. Yet those very same executives earn a fortune from their failures. In my view that is fraud.
I think we should name these guys. If you agree then let me know. Send me your nominations for the biggest frauds in the industry. I’ll treat all input with absolute confidence.
But I may pass on the names of the winners to my mother.
