A former LinkedIn employee has entered the guilty plea courtroom shuffle, admitting to concocting a mail fraud scheme that vacuumed nearly $700,000 out of the networking platform's pockets. Kent Laird, who once headed up LinkedIn Media Productions, is now facing the music after a federal court appearance in San Francisco where the gavel came down on two counts of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, as announced by U.S. Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey and FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert K. Tripp.
Laird's ploy to defraud began in the summer of 2018, when he convinced LinkedIn to hire two Greenhorn contractors with no podcast production credit to their names. According to a statement from the Department of Justice, between June 2018 and December 2019, Laird approved 129 invoices known to be phony, all part of a plan to overinflate the contractors’ pockets and, in turn, to secretly line his own. The contractors, more notably absent from the production work they were billed for, cashed into $689,210, kicking back a cool $184,050 to Laird.
The saga led to Laird's indictment in February, and he faced a stack of charges, including eighteen counts of mail fraud. Now, with a plea deal where Laird agreed to plead guilty to the conspiracy charges, he may just skirt the remaining counts if he stays within the lines of the agreement. It's a trade-off that still lands him in hot water with a potential 20-year prison stint and a quarter-million-dollar fine for each violation awaiting his March 27, 2024, sentencing. According to the Honorable Jaqueline S. Corley, U.S. District Judge, all of this.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara J. Valliere is leading the charge on this prosecution, with Kathy Tat backing up the play.
