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ComGraphics SECURITY BREACHES BY COMGRAPHICS Chicago Illinois
ComGraphics,INC
329 W. 18th Street 10th. Floor, Chicago, IL 60616
I was hired at ComGraphics 6/30/15. It's a easy hire, transitional job. The reason that I say that is because we only work the first week of the month for 10 to 12 hours a day and some months it’s only four days a for the week and for three weeks there isn't any work.
ComGraphics has clients such as, Stifel Nicolous and Company, Stephens, Credit Agricole Securities and CLSA America LLC. These clients have a lot of financial information in these documents that can be embezzled by the right person.
ComGraphics has had two sets of rules for everyone and it has been that way since I started at this company and now I am going to set the record straight. I have seen rules being broken; managers playing favoritism with other employee's and the owner of the company do things that were only to protect herself from the liability of the rules that she knew were being broken.
I have been following these rules and I was talked to like I was a dog by management and called the troublemaker and accused of not getting along with people. In other words, I was being trained to keep my mouth shut and my head down. It’s the typical office politic games.
No, I haven’t been fired. I am still an employee at this company. Now, I am publicly setting the record straight on Ripoff Report, because I am a firm believer in letting the truth be known!
I think that Stifel Nicolous and Company, Stephens, Credit Agricole Securities and CLSA America LLC and all the other companies’ that hire ComGraphics need to know what is really going on with their financial documents and the security issues.
Security breaches by ComGraphics
Denise, the owner of ComGraphics just likes to put on a show to give her clients peace of mind, but believe me, it's just a show. She is the owner of the company and she doesn't even enforce her own rules. However, she is a firm believer in documenting everything for liability purposes.
ComGraphics tells their clients that they have a background check on their employee's for security reasons, so that they can protect the documents that they process for them. That background check is a joke. I successfully completed an interview and filled out my application with the Operations Manager, Kevin Zipsie after answering a public ad in the Bridgeport Newspaper for a position at ComGraphics. I then had to go through a mandatory background investigation and after that I was hired. I was hired on 6/30/015 by Kevin Zipsie.
As a new employee at ComGraphics, I had to also sign an agreement to follow ComGraphics security standards for handling customer information and finally pass a written security test. It took over an hour to complete this whole process. There was so much information to go over. There were so many rules that we went over and it was hard to keep track of everything. One of the rules was the size of the purses that you could carry. I forgot that rule, but when I was reminded of it, I stopped bringing it to work.
During the security test I was told if I wasn’t sure of the answers then they would be provided to me. That told me that the owner was only worried about liability issues. I will have a second and more recent test taken around 11/03/15 for security purposes in my file also. Again, I was told that if I wasn’t sure of the answers, then they would be given to me.
I was told that the background check was compiled of my criminal records, work history records and financial records and this process was necessary due to my exposure to the financial information that I would be exposed to as an employee at ComGraphics.
At this point, ComGraphics has my application and a signed written consent to a background check and a signed document stating that everything that was on the application was the complete truth, a successfully completed background check and this information would still be on file in the office. I don't have intention of changing anything in my file in the future either. It is going to stay like it is now. Just like the owner likes to document everything for liability reasons, I also feel the same way.
On my application, ComGraphics has in writing that my highest education was high school. That is a documented lie that ComGraphics would have caught during the background investigation on my financial investigation. I have over $30,900.00 in student loans with Sallie Mae in deferment that they would have found. If they didn’t find it, then it should be brought to your attention that the background check is not that thorough. If they found it, then they just didn't care that I was a liar.
My sister is a collateral analyst for one of the largest banks in America and she authorizes loans for millions of dollars to companies’ all the time. She has been doing it for 20 years. All she would have to do is tell me what to look for in these documents and I could use a cell phone and text the information to her and/or take pictures of the information that she needed. It really is that simple to steal from ComGraphics clients.
Like I said, ComGraphics puts on a good show, but it is just a show. Everything that you work on is suppose to be documented on a time sheet and then turned in at the end of your shift. That way the owner can keep a record of who was where and what they had their hands on. I have worked in areas briefly when I was being bounced around and I never documented it. When I asked the manager what I should put on my time sheet after completing a small task in a different area, I was told, “don’t worry about it” in a snotty tone. I could have easily retrieved information and they would have blamed someone else for the theft because there was nothing documenting me to that information.
There is even a sign on the door stating that cell phones are not permitted past that entrance. Again, that is just a show that Denise puts on for her clients and to save her own a*s someday if something does go wrong. That is a rule that has never been enforced since I have been employed at ComGraphics. Denise knows this rule isn’t enforced by her management team.
The employee’s use their phones at work all the time. If you don't believe me, have a third party check ALL the staff's cell phone records since I was hired in June of 2015. I will be more than happy to have my cell phone records checked. I did not bring my cell phone to work because I knew that this could be really bad if someone did steal information. I don’t want to go to prison like the Bank Teller, Ruby Parker.
Video surveillance will show that a staff member that was responsible for taking this information to the loading dock had a cell phone openly displayed on his belt. ComGraphics can destroy the video and brief their staff, but they can’t hide the cell phone records of the entire staff since July of 2015.
The owner can try to calm you down at this point and say that everything that is processed in the mail area is documented with a time sheet. I have been bounced around from different jobs and wasn't required to document it. There is camera’s everywhere, but where I work for the most part, you can easily hide behind a pillar and do something like hide a document under your shirt and take it into the bathroom and go into a stall and then photograph information and then put the document back.
I want to address the building security issues. The one and only passenger elevator in the entire building of ten floors was out of service for months. Everyone had to take the freight elevator until it was fixed. You're supposed to have a key to get to the 10th. floor on the freight elevator for security purposes. You do not need a key to get to the 10th. floor.
If you push the 6 floor and 4 floor buttons or the 9th. floor and 4th. floor buttons (I can’t remember) and the elevator doesn't have any stops going up, it will take you straight to the 10th. floor and now you have access to anything you want in ComGraphics. I tried it when I was alone in the elevator once and it really does work that way.
The way that I learned that little trick was because a stranger on the elevator that works in the building and I were just talking to kill time and we were complaining about the passenger elevator being out of service for so long and he told me about it. I guess it's not such a secret in that building.
The building has a receptionist/security and he can say that the building has security and you can’t get to the freight elevator. If you take the passenger elevator to the third floor as if you're a visitor you can get off and walk to the freight elevator and you can get to the 10th. floor. The security in this building doesn’t check you in and call upstairs to the offices. He just sits there playing on his cell phone. If I am lying then he would have sign in sheets of all that past visitors.
Mistakes made by ComGraphic employee’s
It was also my understanding that "team ComGraphics" shared in the willingness to pay attention to this group process during our efforts in the mailing service that is provided by ComGraphics. It was explained to me that everyone had a sense of mutual accountability for the different departments in the mailing area of this production team after two letters left ComGraphics without addresses being displayed in the windows of the envelopes.
The areas consisted of the two separate areas for envelope stuffing. One area hand stuffs the envelopes. One area uses machines. The area that uses the machines to stuff the envelopes has two team members that work together. One person’s job is to feed all the documents into the machine and the other persons responsibility was to catch the stuffed envelopes and check for quality control. It is a team that consisted of a catcher and a feeder.
The catcher’s job consists of checking the addresses in the window of these envelopes and the sealing of the envelopes at times and not at other times. Finally, they are counted by the feeder and documented. If the count was right, they were sent on pallets across the entire factory area where I was hired to work as a catcher in the postage area.
This team at ComGraphics also shared in the accountability of the failures in performance with your clients documents also. You can understand my concern about the cell phone security breach violations that were taking place and the responsibility that I would share if information was photographed for the purpose of embezzlement. I don’t earn enough money to hire a lawyer during a company investigation into something of this magnitude.
Since I was hired, on two separate occasions two envelopes left the building with postage and were sealed but they didn't have addresses in the windows. The letters were returned to the ComGraphics clients. After the owner received the call from the disgruntled client, she backed tracked through the paperwork and five people were written up on one occasion and four people were written up on the second occasion. The mistake happened on the other side of the factory were the envelope stuffers work as a team on the machine, but because it got past everyone, then everyone was written up for it.
All the people that were involved worked there for at least five years and one of the people involved was the floor manager Dave (the manager that has been training me to keep my mouth shut) and he was written up because he did not follow procedure and he let the miscount leave the building even after my feeder on the postage machine informed him of the miscount. I was given a verbal warning the first time because it was my first incident with something like that. The second time a document left the building for the same reason, I was written up. I was fine with accepting the part that I played in the responsibility of the incident and I wasn’t mad at the other people involved in the incident. We all needed to be more careful, and we have been since that happened.
Even verbal warnings are followed up with a written document stating that you were verbally warned, so that ComGraphics will have a paper trail stating that you were warned. That would be in my file with the stupid security test where the answers are provided and the application that I lied on and my inadequate background check that should have shown my Sallie Mae debt.
I work with a morbidly obese woman named Christiania. She's in her late 30's and is about 60 pounds over weight. All she eats is rice at lunch and during our breaks to try to lose weight and she is the most miserable person that I ever met after the first day of standing on her feet for a 12 hour shift and living on rice.
She has been there since January and she has been trained to run the postage machine. She is now an asset to the company because of that reason. I have to bite my tongue and take her attitude and watch her break the rules all the time. If I voice my opinion, then I am the bad guy. Like I said, it’s because she knows how to run the postage machine and that makes her an asset.
She feels that the rules apply to me, but not to her. There are times that she will put the date on the postage stamp and for some reason the date is not suppose to be on the postage. Instead of voiding the stamp out of the machine and asking for a new envelope, filling out the envelope paperwork (yes, they even document envelopes) and making a report in her paper work about what happened, she will cover up the date on the postage with a little white sticker. I have seen her do that a lot.
We are not suppose to have our cell phones in the mail area for security purposes, but that rule doesn't apply to her either, because she's always texting and her phone records will prove it. If I report her, I will be the bad guy.
There has been one side to this story since I was supposed to be trained by her. Training with her consisted of me struggling to try to teach myself the best method to catch and check the envelopes and then stack them on the pallet in bins. That wasn't an easy task and she allowed me to struggle to try to learn how to do it by myself. When I brought it to Dave the managers attention, he started pointing out my mistakes. I though to myself, “I’m making these mistakes because she won’t train me.” That was my first lesson about keeping my mouth shut and putting up with things like this.
My last incident with her was Wednesday, November 4, 2015. It was almost time to go home and we were not busy all day and everything was going ok, except for her hiding her mistakes with stickers on the postage mistakes that she made. We were sealing envelopes but not putting postage on them and there weren’t that many. Her job was to feed the machine. That meant that she was supposed to check the envelopes for the addresses in the window and watch the count on the postage machine.
My job as the catcher was to catch the envelopes when they went through the machine and check that they were sealed and that the addresses were in the window. We had a very small count to do and at the end of the count she said that one envelope was missing.
Ok, my job is to find the envelope and I only had to look through about six bins. It would have taken about 10 minutes to find. Christina talks to me very rude and would not let up and only got louder and louder. I remembered her texting and how she covered up her mistakes instead of taking credit for it and fixing it the right way that same day.
I didn't care that she was morbidly obese and her feet were hurting and her back was hurting. I was angry at this point, because rules apply to her as well as they apply to me. I gave it right back to her and all of it would be on video. If I would have went to Dave and explained what had happened, I would have been the bad guy. That’s the way it has been there since I started working at ComGraphics.
I reminded her about her postage mistakes that day and how she hid it instead of correcting the problem the right way like I was trying to do at that moment with my mistake. We had words and I didn’t back down from her. My days of covering up for her mistakes because I was afraid of losing my own job were over at this point.
The argument became loud and the manager Donna heard the commotion and came over. Donna asked what was going on and of course there were two sides to this story. Donna looked at Christina and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow” in a very soft voice because this conversation was going no ware fast. Donna continued to help me look for the envelope. I was trying to bring to Donna’s attention the fact that Christina had been covering up her mistakes that day and on other occasions and that I felt that it was unfair. She said, “Do you want to go talk to Dave about it?” She knew that I would be walking into the lions den if I talked to him. I told her no and I said, “I’m going to fight like hell on this one.” Donna had concern in her face, found the envelope that wasn’t sealed and she corrected the count on the sheet. The envelope was sealed by me and placed back in the bin. Christina had already left for the day and then I left soon after that because my shift was over for the day.
I am the last stop before your documents leave the shop. If my numbers were off on a regular basis and I could not be trusted with your documents, I would have been written up for it each and every time. Everyone there makes a mistake at one point or another and that is why everyone is held accountable when a defective document leaves the shop.
I was written up because I did not catch someone else’s mistake. I learned that I have to keep my eyes open and double check everything. When something does come to me that wasn’t my fault, I bring it to the person’s attention and it is corrected before it leaves the building. I don’t try to rip anyone’s head off like Christina did to me. If we worked like that as a team, the place would be a war zone.
It is a high volume production job and I have worked there for about 200 hours. I have had one verbal warning and one written warning and both are documented in my file. Christina will show no write ups because she has learned how to cover them up.
I was trying to recover from the flu on Sunday, after I was not working for the past three weeks because I was not scheduled to work. I called the floor manager Dave at 1:30 AM and left a voice mail explaining that I was sick and couldn’t come to work. I also left a voice mail to Kevin Zipsie the Operations Manager explaining my situation. I knew by this time that I could not make it to work by 7:00AM. On Sunday, there was a meeting that I missed because I was sick. The employees were briefed on a new company policy.
That new policy was that food and beverages were not allowed in the work areas anymore. Beverages were expectable only if they were sealed, because someone spilled coffee on a document and turned it into the company anyway. A sealed bottle and/or capped cups were now only expectable. Because I missed that meeting, I didn’t have my coffee in a sealed cup. The cup tipped over and my coffee was spilled. Four documents had to be reprinted. I had to have a paper trail on the incident because everything is documented with either your hand written explanation of what happened or with your signature. I filled out an incident report explaining what had happened and the documents went back to the printing area to be reprinted.
After this incident I was given a verbal warning by Kevin Zepsie the operations manager because I missed the meeting and I didn't know about the new rule. That verbal warning was not followed up with a document stating that I was verbally warned. Believe it or not, that bothers me. I am the kind of person that likes evidence on file, just as much as the owner of the company.
My Alterative to a job like this
Instead of trying to take a white collar job that would be physically less strenuous on my
body and to be able get away from a tired and grouchy obese lady with low self esteem and a snotty attitude because she is hungry, I could have went on an interview to get a job with the Attorney General and I could have made a lot more money if I got the job. I wanted to work at ComGraphics and I can prove it. So, nobody at ComGraphics can say that I didn’t want to work there, because I feel that I am better than doing that kind of work. I don’t feel that way, because it is an honest living.
I publicly declined an interview with the Attorney Generals Office on Ripoff Report while I was employed at ComGraphics. You can see that for yourself if you look up "Ruby Parker of Chicago, IL" It is dated July 2, 2015. I am not hiding my identity on this report either because I am a person of high integrity. I will stand behind anything that I say.
I didn't do anything wrong when I was a student at Northwestern College. If I did do something wrong, then Northwestern College, Dominican University and two other lawyers would have nailed me in court for it by now. I got in their face in this report and I haven't backed down from any of them, just like I did with Christiania at ComGraphics and just like I am doing with ComGraphics now.
You can find me declining the Attorney General’s offer in the attachment on that ripoff report, "Attorney General Office contacts me. Thanks, but no thanks."
2 Updates & Rebuttals
The email I sent to Mr. Magedson after ComGraphics made a mends
#3Author of original report
Fri, December 18, 2015
From: Ruby Parker [mailto:rubydoreen@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2015 6:40 PM
To: Ripoffreport Support <support@ripoffreport.com>
Subject: I wanted to say thank you.
Dear Mr. Magedson,
I wanted to thank you for helping me with ComGraphics INC. I was treated very nicely by the people there this week. Dave, the mean boss is still a jerk, but Donna, my other boss is very nice to me and looks out for me. I like working for her. Kevin the Operations Manager was very polite to me. GG, Rita and Janice gave me a big hug and wished me a Merry Christmas before I left for the month. It was real nice, I liked that a lot. Christina is still evil, but I don't have to work with her anymore. I work with Alice. Alice is very nice and we work very well together as a team. Next month I will get a lot of hours because of the tax season. Thank you very much for helping me.
I hope that you have a wonderful Christmas and you are with all the people that you love for the holiday.
Ruby Parker
ComGraphics made amends
#3Author of original report
Fri, December 18, 2015
Kevin please give this to Denise. (2) People
Ruby Parker <rubydoreen@yahoo.com>
To
kevinz@cgichicago.com
\l "
Today at 12:28 AM
Dear Mr. Zipsie,
I am sure that you read my Ripoff Report by now. I have worked at ComGraphics since this report was posted. I felt that you, Denise and Donna have tried to make a mends. I am glad that we could work out our problems. I sent this email to Ed Magedson, I was hoping that he would have removed the report because I felt that you were honestly trying to make a mends. I honestly like working for you and Donna. Donna is the sweetest person, ever. Madedson should have worked with us on this and he didn't. I don't do business with a bully.
I was very disappointed with the way Mr. Magedson handled it after I sent this email. If you send this to her attorney he can have it posted under the ripoff report. I also asked him to take down my Northwestern College Ripoff. Not because I take back what I have stated about them. Because I stand behind every word that I wrote on that report and they didn't try even try to make a mends. I refuse to do business with a bully so I will fight my own battles on that one.
Tell Denise that I said thanks for working with me on this and tell her I said thanks for the gift card. It was a real nice gift.
Ruby Parker
Ripoff Report Customer Service <support@ripoffreport.com> Thank you for contacting us, We are glad you were able to utilize our website and wish you the best in your future endeavors! Sincerely, Ripoff Report Customer Support
To
'Ruby Parker'
us-mg4.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=cuhobn2t51vub
Dec 8 at 10:45 PM
Thank you for contacting us,
We are glad you were able to utilize our website and wish you the best in your future endeavors!
Sincerely,
Ripoff Report Customer Support
On Tuesday, December 8, 2015 10:45 PM, Ripoff Report Customer Service <support@ripoffreport.com> wrote:
Thank you for contacting us,
We are glad you were able to utilize our website and wish you the best in your future endeavors!
Sincerely,
Ripoff Report Customer Support