MyPayrollHR, a now defunct cloud-based payroll processing firm based in upstate New York, abruptly ceased operations this past week after stiffing employees at thousands of companies. The ongoing debacle, which allegedly involves malfeasance on the part of the payroll company’s CEO, resulted in countless people having money drained from their bank accounts and has left nearly $35 million worth of payroll and tax payments in legal limbo.The goniffs not only stole the incoming payrolls, they stole stole the pay that had already been distributed to employees. They stole money that was set aside for tax payments.
The payroll company was a subsidiary of ValueWise Corp., which also vanished like a thief in the night. They were controlled by some clown named Michael T. Mann, who is also in the wind. The Feds raided his home, but he's in the wind.
If you manage a company and this happened to you and your employees, the FBI wants to talk to you.
I've not found a photo of this guy, but it's probably a safe bet that the FBI's got one.
This goes to show the risks of both direct deposit and using third parties for payroll processing. The safest thing to do would be to take the company's check, cash it, and then put the cash into your bank account, which is at a different bank. Of course, there's the risk of being robbed on the way to make the deposit, but them's the breaks.
3 comments:
Excellent rundown of what happened on Brian Krebs blog, krebsonsecurity dot com.
"The safest thing to do would be to take the company's check, cash it, and then put the cash into your bank account, which is at a different bank."
Except that the first bank will require two forms of picture ID to cash your paycheck if you don't have an account with them. I went a couple of decades working and not having a bank account after being robbed of my last hundred bucks by my bank after the restaurant I worked for went out of business in the eighties, and developed a relationship with a check cashing place that actually cares about its customers (No Hassle Check Cashing on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley. They're good people and the 2% they charge was worth it to me to be treated like a human being).
I've never had two acceptable forms of picture ID except when I did business with a different check cashing place that issued their own, and even that wasn't accepted anywhere else.
They do make it difficult for poor people and people who don't get with their program.
I did all of my business with cash from 1988 until 2009, and frankly, it was a pain in the ass. Every payday I had to go to the check cashing place and get money orders for all bills I mailed in, and since I rarely had access to a vehicle, that was a time investment as well. And then there was the whole "walking around Oakland with hundreds of dollars in cash in my pocket" all the time (although I have never been jacked up and robbed while doing so, but most of that walking around was before I used a cane).
My current bank is run by a bunch of reptiles, obviously, but so far I've received decent customer service there, and direct deposit and a debit card have made my life easier and safer.
-Doug in Oakland
The recommendation most settled on in the discussion about this was direct deposit to account A, automatic transfer of that deposit to account B. That way the reversal cannot draw from account B. Of course, the reversal was a) screwed up and b) illegal.
Because of this, the primary company snarfed the money and ran with it...the middle company is out the money and gonna get sued...and the employees may have to wait between a few days to some weeks to get their accounts fixed correctly.
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