United States Watchdogs

Protecting Americans' Right to Free Speech

Billionaire Greg Whitten: Never Having To Say He’s Sorry?

by ·

Greg Whitten: Billionaires Never Say They're Sorry

Greg Whitten: Billionaires Never Say They’re Sorry

Apparently, being a billionaire means “never having to say you’re sorry”.  After Greg Whitten et al., (Greg Whitten), were caught red-handed lying and attempting to humiliate a former employee, he has still not apologized. Greg Whitten’s own documents (document links below) and voice-mail show a history of lies and/or gross incompetence.

Greg Whitten was given multiple opportunities to tell his side of the story, yet never once denied the facts presented by the U.S. Freedom Network Investigative Blogs. If this were a trial, our bet is that a jury would return a unanimous guilty verdict.

This former employee is the person believed to have been the author of the software that is the backbone, or at least the blueprint, of the Numerix Distributed Object System, without which, well, you can come to your own conclusion.

We should also mention that the various contracts between Whitten and the Software’s Author, all signed by Whitten himself, included the agreements to pay well over $250,000 in fees and salary for this software the first year, plus bonuses.

Be sure to see part I and II to this story

Let’s Recap: The former employee worked for a Greg Whitten company called Proximation, LLC, in the high-altitude of Santa Fe, New Mexico, which most likely caused the start of his heart failure leading to his early retirement. Proximation, for all practical purposes, was absorbed by another Greg Whitten company called Numerix, LLC.

We believe that Greg Whitten wrongfully avoided paying the employee the remaining $50,000 he was contractually owed for his software. This was clear in the the contract personally signed by Greg Whitten and the employee. Then, he appears to have used the same predatory tactics of his mentor, Bill Gates, when he was employed at Microsoft. Let us not forget, Bill Gate’s Microsoft was sued by both the United States and European Governments for these same types of predatory practices.

Fast-forward 14 years to 2014. The summary is taken from our last story about Greg Whitten, who we refer to as the “Bully Blionaire”: Billionaire Greg Whitten Paid: So Why The “Lies”?

“Our Retiree applies for Social Security. Shortly afterward, he receives a notice from Social Security that he may be due $6800 from Proximation, the company he had worked for 14 years previously. The problem is that Proximation and Metavante, the company handling Proximation’s profit-sharing/retirement funds at the time of the Retiree’s employment, are no longer in business. After months of emails, letters and phone calls to company after company trying to find information about the money, our Retiree gets a voicemail from an unknown caller (425-818-2278). It appears that Whitten et al. were quite annoyed that the Retiree was bothering them for such a “trivial” amount. Think we’re kidding? Listen to the voicemail.

Greg Whitten

Greg Whitten

At this point, our Retiree threatened to sue. He finally heard from Gary Mueller who represented Whitten et al. and the response was that they were denying our Retiree’s claim as he hadn’t participated in his 401K. The denial came in an attachment to Mr. Mueller’s email, by Marilyn Bartelme, Compliance Specialist at retirementpartner.com. As pointed out by the Retiree in his email back to Ms. Bartelme and Mr. Mueller, they couldn’t make that claim as they had fired him before he could make a contribution. Sound familiar? Sure sounded to us like yet another Condition Precedent claim, just like the one made to not pay the $50K.”

Salient Points:

  1. Whitten’s agents for months ignore the letters they received and were required to answer by the IRS.
  2. Apparently in an attempt to demean and discourage their former employee, they leave him a demeaning phone message.
  3. Great-West joins in with their agent, Marilyn Bartelme, who stated that the employee is not entitled to, what she now calls a “401K”, as he never contributed.
  4. Documents are shown proving it was a “Profit Sharing Plan”.
  5. Now with the threat of a lawsuit and the stories being published on this and other U.S. Freedom Network Investigative Blogs, Greg Whitten et al. go looking for the documents.
  6. Low and behold, they found the documents they, a) said didn’t exist, and, b) said were denied for non-contribution.
  7. After all of their attempts to deny and discourage their former employee, they found that he had in fact been paid.

So why all of the “lies”?

We could assume that these were all simple mistakes on a very old case. But what about the state-of-the-art (at the time) software for which Greg Whitten refused to pay the price he agreed to pay this same employee? Is this distributed object system of the same type he uses in his new company Numerix?

From Greg Whitten, Great-West Assurance: The Rainmaker Revisited?

Distributed Object System“Fourteen years ago, Greg Whitten licensed a full distributed object system and hired the expert who wrote it. For our techies, it was similar to Microsoft’s COM and DCOM. Distributed objects are the core technical stuff that works behind the scenes and makes things like the Internet work. This expert, who we’ll call the Retiree, granted Proximation a non-exclusive license to his software for the sum of $100,000 dollars, a fraction of its reported worth, but the Retiree was collateral damage from the dot com crash. To help Proximation implement the software and train their employees, Whitten insisted he sign an employment agreement to stay with Proximation for a year and structured the $100,000 to be paid in four quarterly installments. He was given a $185,000 salary plus bonuses and a $10,000 moving expense allowance. Not exactly minimum wage stuff.”

Greg Whitten, where is the apology?

Greg Whitten did not pay this former employee the money he had contractually agreed to pay him for the software received from him, claiming after firing him without cause, that he hadn’t completed his one year employment contract, again, this contract was signed personally by Greg Whitten. While most people would probably call that criminal, in civil law it’s called a “Condition Precedent”, and the actions of Greg Whitten clearly qualify. The former employee told us that he settled after his counsel reminded him of the cost to sue a billionaire like Greg Whitten, a fact we believe Greg Whitten would have relied on.

While Whitten, like Gates, will more than likely never apologize for his contract actions, that does not excuse Whitten from his actions when asked for profit sharing information sent by the Social Security Administration to the former employee that he was required to answer.

Avoidance at all costs? When Greg Whitten’s former star employee had to take early social security due to heart failure that more than likely began when working at altitude at Proximation, he was notified by social security that Greg Whitten’s company Proximation, now, for all intents and purposes, Numerix, owes him $6800 in profit sharing monies.

After months of trying to get simple information from Greg Whitten and his agents about this money and whether or not it has been paid, and getting no response, he finally threatened to sue. We think you will agree that the resulting documents and telephone message clearly show an attempt by Greg Whitten and his agents to intimidate and humiliate the former employee, perhaps hoping that he would get discouraged and just go away, or was it all about the software?

Greg Whitten, it's time to man up!

Greg Whitten: Will He Man Up?

Now, after presenting proof of these bad acts of Greg Whitten et al., Greg Whitten, even through his agents, has never apologized to the former employee, apparently believing that billionaires never have to say they’re sorry.

Greg Whitten, we think it’s time to man up: we will be happy to publish your apology; Just send us your written or taped (voice or video) apology and we will be happy to publish it here at the U.S. Watchdogs and other U.S. Freedom Network Investigative Blogs.

 

Document Links

Related Stories

Tags:

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *