Mahalo CEO Tells Why Company Employed a Felon
Jason Calacanis, CEO of search engine startup Malaho, published an open letter on his blog explaining “why he employed a felon.”
John Schiefer was charged with and pleaded guilty to installing malware on computers, without the knowledge of the computers' owners, in order to intercept private information and conduct identity theft and wire and bank fraud in November of 2007. Not too long after, Schiefer applied for a job in Malaho.
Calacanis starts out by clarifying that he didn’t know John Schiefer was convicted of infecting 250,000 computers with bots when he was hired by the company. Calacanis details that while they ask for a number of references (between three and five) for all employees and Schiefer passed “with flying colors,” the fault lay with his CTO, Mark Jeffery, who screwed up by not doing a simple Google search on John’s name. If he had, he would have easily found out about these crimes, and John would never have been a Mahalo employee.
When Calacanis did find out about the crimes months later, he sat down with Schiefer and eventually decided not to fire him. He says Schiefer will still have a job to come back to when he gets out of prison.
“John’s work is well-supervised. Mahalo follows strict security policies and we don’t store any sensitive data anyway. (Even if one of our employees did go off the deep end, the most they would have access to would be your questions and answers on Mahalo Answers–not much damage can be done there since they’re all public anyway).”
We think it's a noble thing, letting a felon keep his job and standing by him when he's sentenced. On the other hand, we're not sure it'll do much to assure Malaho users. Check out the full letter on Jason Calacanis’ blog.
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People need to ask themselves if jail time is meant to punish, rehabilitate, or just make us all feel the justice was served. Keeping people under the heel of society because of past mistakes that have already been accounted for is bad form.
Cheers for Malaho. If he can do the job, and is qualified, then good. We need to stop pretending everyone is a boy scout and accept people, warts and all, and let people live their lives without constantly reminding them of their lowest point in life. They already wish it never happened.
Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone
... They already wish it never happened.
Thats the key point right there. ASSUMING, they wish it never happened, and that they regret their mistakes. If, on the other hand, the only thing they regret is getting caught, they are more than likely going to do it again in the future.
I'm not saying thats the case here, all I'm saying is you have to be considerate of peoples actions in the past (criminal or otherwise), rather than just assume that time heals all wounds.
Its a fine line to walk along, and in the end, if he had lost his job, he would only have himself to blame.
I would also give him a job if I could, even if I knew that he was convicted, he is smart for sure and he can get the job done. If he did a second felony I would send him back to prison myself. But I would give him a chance to change in the first place.
He was not convicted for rape/murder after all...
I have never met a Cyber criminal that was in any way repentant or would even admit they did anything wrong besides being caught. They will break the law again the second they have a chance to do so. I personally thing the US government should have a law saying that no one convicted of cyber crime can even be employed to work for the government at a computer related job. I would also like to see an addition to that if you want to do any business with the US government you must adopt the same policy.
We do not let child molesters become camp councilors for a very good reason. This is the same thing.
I have never met a Cyber criminal that was in any way repentant or would even admit they did anything wrong besides being caught.
How many "Cyber criminal" have you met?
It is very unfair to assume people don’t regret their mistakes. I am sure sometime in your life you had done something you wish you hadn’t.
I agree with martin0642, kudos to Malaho.
I'm sure someone who can bank fraud on such a large scale would have more legal, practical uses.
on John’s name
Sorry but why would a background check fall with in the duties of a chief technology officer?
I would assume who ever hired him directly and did not perform a simple background check would be to blame. (HR, department managers)
It's not the ones you know about that should worry you. It's the ones that haven't been caught yet that should be your concern. At least people know to keep an eye on the guy. I don't see a problem with it.
I hate the background checks now. Even the smallest of companies with nothing to need it do a background check and fire people for Speeding Tickets. It must suck to be a felon, constantly getting denied jobs because of breaking the law once. They served their judgement, why must the continued to be punished.
FYI: The FBI employs quite a bit of people like him. Why? Because they(hackers,etc) can actually get the job done quickly and effectively. On the right side of the law, people like these are quite a powerful tool.
First its "Malaho", then "Mahalo"
Which one is it?
Make up your mind, proof your work, and get an editor that can actually read. Otherwise people are less inclined to take your articles seriously, or even read them.