Comment by JumpCrisscross
16 hours ago
> Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, now both 34, had been in trouble before. Back in 2015, the brothers pled guilty in Virginia to a scheme involving wire fraud and computers. Muneeb was sentenced to three years in prison, while Sohaib got two.
After their stints in jail, the brothers worked their way back into the tech world. In 2023, Muneeb got a job with a Washington, DC, firm that sold software and services to 45 federal clients; Sohaib got a job at the same company a year later.
What in the actual fuck. I'm all for giving people second chances. But maybe some ringfencing?
No, this is exactly what giving people second chances looks like. It means taking a risk that they're the sort of person who is likely to commit a crime and who will commit a crime again after being given the second chance. The only way to prevent this is to have a blanket policy against giving second chances to people convicted of crimes, which harms people who genuinely intend to reform and not commit crimes again, and who you cannot systematically distinguish from chronic criminals.
There are literally thousands of occupations a former computer based wire fraudster can be given a second chance in that aren't here's a computer full of sensitive government files, with CRUD privileges.
Like... I think ex drugs dealer deserve a chance of legitimate employment, but perhaps doling out prescription drugs is best left to someone that doesn't need a "second chance" to demonstrate they're unusually trustworthy and unlikely to be tempted by the possible side incomes.
The fraud conviction seems totally inappropriate for a government contractor and yet... somehow totally appropriate for someone appointed to work directly for the upper echelons of federal government. Hell, everyone else hacking government officials emails and tax returns and randomly deleting stuff for the lolz in February 2025 was being paid by DOGE.
The article isn't particularly clearly written, but it seems like their background checks were bad and were fired once management figured it out.