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

Post by EpicEng » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 3:03 PM UTC

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…

Post by mdorazio » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #439

fitchjo wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that the bankers should go to jail for the misrepresentations made by the applicant because they didn’t exercise an “appropriate” level of diligence?

No, IIRC from reports years back, there is considerable evidence that this kind of fraud was not often not initiated by applicants but encouraged by lender agents, who were in turn encouraged by lender policies and incentive structure, which was set by lender executives. This isn't lack of diligence, this is setting a policy with reasonably foreseeable consequences.

Post by dreamcompiler » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

bookofjoe wrote: post #221

gamblor956 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had a good idea of what they wanted to do (blood tests using very thin needles) but never successfully figured out how to accomplish that with the level of accuracy required. Most Medical professionals believe that what they wanted to do was simply impossible from a biological perspective due to the natural variations of blood content. It would have been like trying to determine traffic on a freeway by taking a…

Well stated. I'm a retired neurosurgical anesthesiologist who relied on accurate blood test results to manage major intracranial procedures. No way would I accept a finger-stick hemoglobin/hematocrit as the basis on which to decide on the need for blood transfusion. Why? Because as a medical intern I did them routinely, because I had to get a number to present at morning rounds and even our excellent STAT Lab (LAC-US…

Post by techsin101 » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #300

"Wire fraud" - it's amazing the litany of things one can do, and ultimately get caught up in this specific basket. Al Capone went down for tax evasion ...

Post by SilasX » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 3:52 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #295

SilasX wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for everyone one of those I can find about a thousand HN comments telling you to push on even if you're unsure about whether you can deliver. Edit: For that reason, most of this "I told you so" sounds like hindsight bias if it comes from someone who would normally take the attitude of "fake it till you make it", "don't wait until you're sure you have a working product".

Look at my comments on the April thread. I was incredibly sceptical about a 19 year old with no experience starting a biotech company. All of my comments had a large number of upvotes (for 2015), while many of the people disagreeing with me were downvoted into the negatives.