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U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

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Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#361

Post by konschubert »

konschubert wrote: post #162
meowface wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They knew it didn't work, but kept selling it anyway, which is where it went from just faking it to outright fraud. I'm playing Devil's advocate and not justifying or defending their fraud and the physical harm they caused, but if we were to look at Holmes' intentions, I'm suspecting it was something like "we just need to do this for a few months/years until our technology works", rather than "let's just run this sc…

No, it's just that annoying mentality of "fake it till you make it".

Edit: And I mean 'just' to be understood with quotation marks.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#362

Post by kennxfl »

mhneu wrote: post #238

Excellent news for American society. “The Chickenshit Club” by Eisinger recently explained why the lack of criminal charges had emboldened white collar crime. Basically, individuals need to have the risk of criminal charges if they do something very egregious - they need to have skin in the game. The US Justice Dept has in the past two decades largely only been fining corporations. And so companies estimate risk and…

I think medical-related crimes are very different. Especially when they directly affect patients. Few people have gotten away with fraud on the cash side in this industry though. Valeant Phamaceuticals. Shkreli

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#363

Post by ThrustVectoring »

Terr_ wrote: post #333
vowelless wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Mark Zuckerberg who has an annual salary of $1.00?

They misspoke, Finland fines a percentage of income , which would include money from selling Facebook stock to pay for rent, food, yachts, etc. IANATaxLawyer, but I imagine gaming the system would require you to take out non-taxable loans using that company stock as collateral, and hope that your lawlessness is caught during the living-on-a-loan years rather than the liquidate-and-repay years.

Or liquidate a portion of your holdings and realize your gains in a non-penalty year. Either works.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#364

Post by narag »

glangdale wrote: post #346
ryan-allen wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia we have 'demerit points', so if you rack up enough of them, you can lose your license, which takes away your right to drive a car. If you drive without a license and get caught, you have no insurance and you can go to jail as it's considered contempt of court. So the fines are no big deal to the rich here, but the right to drive is incentive enough to stop being an asshat.

Actually, rich people in Sydney just paid their employees to say "oh, I was driving that car at the time". Pretty scandalous.

That's another good reason to forbid photo-only fines. Force police to actually stop the car. Also if you lie authorities to protect another person, it's a stronger offense than speeding. Give jail to those and few people would take the risk.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#365

Post by csomar »

kennxfl wrote: post #362
mhneu wrote: post #238

Excellent news for American society. “The Chickenshit Club” by Eisinger recently explained why the lack of criminal charges had emboldened white collar crime. Basically, individuals need to have the risk of criminal charges if they do something very egregious - they need to have skin in the game. The US Justice Dept has in the past two decades largely only been fining corporations. And so companies estimate risk and…

I think medical-related crimes are very different. Especially when they directly affect patients. Few people have gotten away with fraud on the cash side in this industry though. Valeant Phamaceuticals. Shkreli

> Few people have gotten away with fraud on the cash side in this industry though. Valeant Phamaceuticals. Shkreli

I don't think Shkreli was defrauding regarding his pharmaceutical practices. (though he has security charges). He was using shady practices that were totally legal. Completely different game.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#366

Post by sgt101 »

glangdale wrote: post #346
ryan-allen wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia we have 'demerit points', so if you rack up enough of them, you can lose your license, which takes away your right to drive a car. If you drive without a license and get caught, you have no insurance and you can go to jail as it's considered contempt of court. So the fines are no big deal to the rich here, but the right to drive is incentive enough to stop being an asshat.

Actually, rich people in Sydney just paid their employees to say "oh, I was driving that car at the time". Pretty scandalous.

Surely that is a criminal conspiracy; most places would rate that as far more serious than a license confiscation. There was a case in the UK where a politician did this with his wife and it resulted in prison for both! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Huhne I think that if money had changed hands and if guilty pleas hadn't been entered it would have been a longer sensor.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#367

Post by kennxfl »

It's people like Tim Draper that encouraged the fraud. From a totally logical point of view:

1. How do you invest millions in technology you cannot even look at even in year 10?

2. How do you defend a CEO in public by attacking credible journalists and not even once question the actual concerns in the company?

3. A medical company run by a first year drop-out and one without a single licensed doctor on the board?

C'mon. Even Steve Jobs did not get that leeway.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#368

Post by briandear »

loeg wrote: post #345
jakobegger wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it a percentage of taxable income or something like that. Lots of people have non-salary income.

Or a percent of wealth. Although that isn't really effective punishment for people who blow all their income and don't save anyway.

So should jail sentences be done the same way? If I am in jail 10 days, I lose a hell of a lot more money than some bum spending the same 10 days. So the cost of jail is much greater to me on a per day basis. This “based on wealth” concept is fine, assuming that also applies to jail sentences. We can’t expect an egalitarian scheme for fines if we neglect the same consideration for jail. Assuming our goal is inflicting pain proportionally. But people wouldn’t like a rich CEO spending a day in jail and a cab driver spending 25 years in jail for the same crime — even though the relative financial costs would be similar in terms of opportunity cost. Should a CEO pay $100,000 for a drivers license?

This leads down a very slippery slope.

Is there really an epidemic of rich people committing crimes at a higher rate than the non-rich? It doesn’t seem like criminality rates are higher among the rich, thus the premise that rich people should have a larger deterrent doesn’t seem to have much support in terms of evidence.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#369

Post by dempseye »

Matachines wrote: post #60
mchannon wrote: post #43

I have been in this exact place before. For the two of them, this day will be just about the worst of their lives. This is ordinarily when hard-core criminals are taken into custody. If their experience was like mine, they had to show up in front of a magistrate with their lawyers, plead not guilty, then go to a dungeon for about 30 minutes while they get handcuffed, fingerprinted, mugshotted, and DNA-swabbed. Then,…

The craziest part of the justice system is how dependent on money it is. I am in a weekly support group for people with the same offense category as me, sometimes crimes not as bad as mine. Most of the members in this group are working class - hourly jobs, no savings, no emergency funds, government lawyers. They mostly had to serve time, had to register as offenders, have strict stipulations. Meanwhile I was able to…

What was the crime? I understand if you don't want to reveal that on here.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#370

Post by eric-hu »

api wrote: post #143
atombender wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This interview with John Carreyrou [1], the Wall Street Journal journalist who is largely responsible for exposing Theranos, goes into a lot of detail. It's long, so if you want a shorter answer, jump to the question "What technology did Theranos actually develop?": Basically there were three iterations of the technology. The first one used microfluidics, which are basically the repurposing of the micro-fabrication t…

> The short answer is her Jobs-like "reality distortion field" -- she was exceedingly good at convincing ... Considering this and the lack of substance behind her claims, I would personally bet money that she is a clinical psychopath. The most disturbing thing I have ever observed about human beings is our tendency to follow psychopaths. Psychopaths seem to have this gravity around them and people just fall into line…

You make an interesting observation. I wonder if there are any doomsday stories of an AI that conquers humanity via psychopathic persuasion rather than conventional weapons.
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