Career Missteps

Have you ever heard of a guy who gets fired from the plant for stealing some tools?  You know, he loses his job for $100?  Or takes pictures of a hot new prototype and gets canned for it.

Out of the UK comes a story of an executive at BlackRock Inc.,  a financial services company.  He figured out a way to save about  £21.50 a day on his commute between his palatial suburban home and his London office. After about 4 years of this, he was caught.  Oh, by the way, the fares on this neck of the track were based on the honor system.

From Les Levin at Dealbreaker.com, August 2014:

Jonathan Burrows has been unmasked as the mystery fare dodger of East Sussex who hit the news after settling a £43,000 bill for unpaid tickets over five years. The 44-year-old investment executive is thought to be the biggest fare dodger in history – avoiding the £21.50-a-day fee, despite owning two mansions worth £4million. He had hoped to avoid prosecution and publicity by reimbursing Southeastern trains just three days after being caught by a ticket inspector last November. Law-abiding commuters were outraged when the story broke in April that the rail firm had allowed him to quietly settle the allegations without being prosecuted…His commuting scam was uncovered last year when a ticket inspector at London’s Cannon Street station, close to Burrows’s office, saw him swiping through the ticket barriers with his pre-paid Oyster travel card. The inspector realised Burrows had been charged only £7.20 – the modest penalty imposed when a passenger has failed to swipe in at the start of a journey. Burrows admitted having failed to use his Oyster card to tap in for five journeys between London Bridge – where he got off his train from East Sussex – and Cannon Street, which should have cost him just £2.30 a time. However, further inquiries revealed that until 2008 Burrows had been buying an annual season ticket from Stonegate, which has no ticket barriers, to Cannon Street, which costs around £4,500 a year for standard class. A standard daily single fare is £21.50. He had then stopped buying season tickets, but simply continued working in London, apparently only paying £7.20 for the brief final leg of his long train journey. Southeastern told Burrows he owed them £42,550 in unpaid fares, plus £450 in legal costs.

Burrows  "mentioned" the incident to his management, was suspended, and when more questions were asked he resigned during the last week of July 2014

Today we learn (Money.CNN):

A former managing director at BlackRock has been banned from the industry for life by U.K. regulators.
The Financial Conduct Authority said the crime showed Burrows lacked honesty and integrity, and was therefore not a "fit and proper" person to work in financial services.

Not only did Burrows lose his job, but he can never get work in the financial industry again. At least in the UK.  I wonder if he could get work here.  The financial industry is pretty jittery about irregularities like this.