linda miller
Recruit
- Messages
- 3
Hi there,
A friend who lost around five dollars to binary options fraudsters recommended that I post something here, though my case with Standard Fidelity might be a little bit unusual as I am rather a type of secondary victim.
I am a secretary at a huge producer of medical drugs and equipment and, essentially, am about to lose my job because of all of this, pending the findings of the internal audit department, I think, but I better start at the beginning.
It was around the middle of last year when I got a call for my boss from Standard Fidelity in Japan asking for his cell number. I had never heard of the company, but since he takes regular business trips to Asia I saw no harm in providing the information requested. It was a woman with a British accent I spoke to, can‘t remember much more, except that’s she said something about a new product one of our main competitors in the cancer treatment field was about to bring to market. So, I really had every reason to believe that this was not only a legitimate, but important work-related matter.
I then heard nothing more about this until I received an invitation from the internal audit department for an employee interview, accompanied by hundreds of pages I was supposed to work through before the next day in preparation for the interview.
I can‘t explain everything here but essentially it comes down to this. My boss wound up investing around 120,000 USD in Exelexis shares, which is our competitor and a NASDQ member. Since they had in fact developed a new cancer drug, their stock value almost doubled over the next few months. When it reached some 240,000 USD my boss decided that it was time to cash out. The first thing that happened was some tax consultancy firm, Carlton Church, contacted him and asked that he pay about 40,000 USD to them as US withholding tax for non-resident aliens. They said it would be refunded if he just filed a US income tax return with the IRS through them. He agreed to pay. A few weeks later, an alleged "transfer agent" going by the name of DCS Trust/ Pt. Equity DCS contacted him and asked for a broker‘s commission of another 10,000 USD, which he also paid. After that he waited, but his money never came. Calls were not returned and even a formal letter from a debt collection agency went unanswered. At that point, my boss hired a private investigator whose final findings were then turned over to our internal audit department, etc. . .
Though the auditors treated me very nicely I still I ask myself – what the **** can I do for all of this? The 120,000 my boss lost is more money than I make in a year. I am certainly not as smart as he is and I do not have all the degrees he has but I am not dumb. As a matter of fact, I would have stopped paying at the very moment when they asked for money to be wired to foreign bank accounts in countries like Indonesia, the Philippines or some Baltic states I had never heard of before.
One thing that I do not get at all is: why was the last question the auditors asked me if I had any knowledge about some mass spam advertising QCMG-stock, a company allegedly also developing cancer drugs but whose shares seem to be practically worthless? Or whether I knew anything about an obscure “Nucerus-Bot-Net”? I did not even know what a “Bot Net“ was, but maybe this was the point that brought my employers‘ audit department on the plan – I don‘t know.
What I would like to know from you folks here is, if I am fired and I have to pay back the 120,000 USD, could I sue Standard Fidelity/Carlton Church and DCS/Pt. Equity Trust? Or if something went wrong with the company‘s IT structure am I liable for this? I mean, all I did was answer the phone, and it’s my job to answer the phone.
A friend who lost around five dollars to binary options fraudsters recommended that I post something here, though my case with Standard Fidelity might be a little bit unusual as I am rather a type of secondary victim.
I am a secretary at a huge producer of medical drugs and equipment and, essentially, am about to lose my job because of all of this, pending the findings of the internal audit department, I think, but I better start at the beginning.
It was around the middle of last year when I got a call for my boss from Standard Fidelity in Japan asking for his cell number. I had never heard of the company, but since he takes regular business trips to Asia I saw no harm in providing the information requested. It was a woman with a British accent I spoke to, can‘t remember much more, except that’s she said something about a new product one of our main competitors in the cancer treatment field was about to bring to market. So, I really had every reason to believe that this was not only a legitimate, but important work-related matter.
I then heard nothing more about this until I received an invitation from the internal audit department for an employee interview, accompanied by hundreds of pages I was supposed to work through before the next day in preparation for the interview.
I can‘t explain everything here but essentially it comes down to this. My boss wound up investing around 120,000 USD in Exelexis shares, which is our competitor and a NASDQ member. Since they had in fact developed a new cancer drug, their stock value almost doubled over the next few months. When it reached some 240,000 USD my boss decided that it was time to cash out. The first thing that happened was some tax consultancy firm, Carlton Church, contacted him and asked that he pay about 40,000 USD to them as US withholding tax for non-resident aliens. They said it would be refunded if he just filed a US income tax return with the IRS through them. He agreed to pay. A few weeks later, an alleged "transfer agent" going by the name of DCS Trust/ Pt. Equity DCS contacted him and asked for a broker‘s commission of another 10,000 USD, which he also paid. After that he waited, but his money never came. Calls were not returned and even a formal letter from a debt collection agency went unanswered. At that point, my boss hired a private investigator whose final findings were then turned over to our internal audit department, etc. . .
Though the auditors treated me very nicely I still I ask myself – what the **** can I do for all of this? The 120,000 my boss lost is more money than I make in a year. I am certainly not as smart as he is and I do not have all the degrees he has but I am not dumb. As a matter of fact, I would have stopped paying at the very moment when they asked for money to be wired to foreign bank accounts in countries like Indonesia, the Philippines or some Baltic states I had never heard of before.
One thing that I do not get at all is: why was the last question the auditors asked me if I had any knowledge about some mass spam advertising QCMG-stock, a company allegedly also developing cancer drugs but whose shares seem to be practically worthless? Or whether I knew anything about an obscure “Nucerus-Bot-Net”? I did not even know what a “Bot Net“ was, but maybe this was the point that brought my employers‘ audit department on the plan – I don‘t know.
What I would like to know from you folks here is, if I am fired and I have to pay back the 120,000 USD, could I sue Standard Fidelity/Carlton Church and DCS/Pt. Equity Trust? Or if something went wrong with the company‘s IT structure am I liable for this? I mean, all I did was answer the phone, and it’s my job to answer the phone.
