In summer, Barry Kasoff has taken over DigitalRiver Inc from Siris capital. (both cooperated in other cases in past).
Barry’s special skill is the “dirty work” (breaking contracts, firing employees without severance, etc), he is renowned as a “Terminator” of companies.
The german “DigitalRiver GmbH” mainly runs the “MyCommerce” platform, reselling software of small to medium software developers.
Siris and Barry decided to terminate DigitalRiver GmbH, steal ~ 50 Mio Eur from their customers, thus making a huge profit out of it.
The tricky plan seems to be:
- Some years back in time, DigitalRiver GmbH guaranteed for 100 Mio USD which DigitalRiver Inc has borrowed, due January 31st 2025. DR Gmbh officially reported that in their last annual statement of 2022.
- DigitalRiver GmbH could never realistically pay it back, but it can officially "assume" that the mother company will re-finance it, therefore it can claim to be solvent and continue operating.
- In August, Barry purchased DigitalRiver Inc from Siris.
- Now, since August DigitalRiver simply stopped to pay any money they owed to software companies. This was on direct order of Barry. Thus, they keep some ~ 50 Mio Eur money (equalling roughly 3 months of transactions – as of course customers sooner or later run away…). This of course breaks all contracts, but it is not directly a criminal act (so its hard to go to jail for it).
- From August to January, on Barry’s order, they tell all kinds of lies to customers, playing for time (like “we’ll solve it soon” (a lie), “we’ll pay in 60 instead of 15 days” (a lie), “we will update you soon” (a lie), “we dispute we owe you money” (a lie, they gave us a credit note already), and so on.
- On January 31st, DigitalRiver GmbH will “unexpectedly” learn that the mother company did not refinance the 100 Mio USD. So they’ll use their 50 Mio Eur stolen from software companies to pay half of that debt. Directly afterwards, they will declare bankruptcy.
As a result, DigitalRiver GmbH and MyCommerce will be gone, and DigitalRiver Inc thus Barry and/or Siris will be richer by ~ 50 Mio. (borrowed 100 Mio, have to pay back only the left 50 Mio of it).
While its obvious that it should be illegal to steal 50 Mio this way, unfortunately the construction they chose will make it hard to make them liable for it. Even more, as they would surely spend millions to defend their loot, and their adversaries are only ill-defended small companies (hundreds of them).
Who would rob a bank, gain a 1 Mio but then go to Jail, if you could rob MyCommerce customers, gain 50 Mio and enjoy your life?
