SAN JOSE A federal jury convicted Michael Kail, the former Vice President of IT Operations at Netflix, of wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering, announced Acting United States Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds, IRS-Criminal Investigation Acting Special Agent in Charge Michael Daniels, and Federal Bureau of Investigation Craig D. Fair. The verdict follows a two-week and a half week trial before the Honorable Beth L. Freeman, U.S. District Judge.
Kail was indicted May 1, 2018, of nineteen counts of wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud, and seven counts of money laundering, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 (mail fraud), 1343 (wire fraud), 1346 (honest services fraud), and 1957 (money laundering). The indictment also sought forfeiture of Kail s Los Gatos residential property. The jury returned a verdict of guilty on 28 of the 29 counts.
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A federal jury on Friday convicted Michael Kail, Netflix’s former vice president of IT operations, of taking bribes from tech startups looking to do business with the streaming giant.
Kail was found guilty on 28 out of 29 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering, after a 2 ½-week trial at the San Francisco-based U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement Friday.
The Los Gatos-based 49-year-old was indicted in May 2018, accused of accepting over $500,000 in kickbacks between 2012 and 2014 in exchange for approving millions’ of dollars worth of contracts to tech companies that were seeking to do business with Netflix.
A California federal jury heard testimony during the third day of a criminal bribery trial Tuesday that a former Netflix executive provided the streaming service's third-party vendor with potentially confidential pricing data from the startup's competitors while he served as an adviser and held equity in the startup.
During the second day of a former Netflix executive's criminal bribery trial, a California federal jury viewed internal email exchanges in which a startup CEO acknowledged that "there's clearly some pay-to-play" occurring between his company and the streaming giant.